After such a shipwreck, it’s hard to smooth out your answers and keep your cool. The stinging defeat of Saint-Etienne at Lorient on the 31st day of Ligue 1 (2-6), when the Greens were leading 2-0 at the start of the match, risks leaving traces for a club which is fighting to maintain its the elite.
“We sucked,” railed Denis Bouanga at the microphone of Prime Video just after the meeting. The author of the opener did not mince his words in front of the camera: “Shame on us, we’re putting an entire club to shame.” It had been 38 years since the Greens had conceded six goals in a Ligue 1 match, and a 0-7 defeat against Bordeaux on March 31, 1984.
Above all, the horizon of ASSE, 18th and first relegation seven days from the end, continues to darken. A few minutes later, the anger was still present and especially difficult to hide by Pascal Dupraz, quite annoyed at a press conference. An interview with the journalists which did not last long before the Savoyard left the room. “My feelings, I’ll keep them to myself”he dropped from the first sentences of his speech.
️ “We didn’t respect the fundamentals, we didn’t respect football tonight”
The “shame” of Pascal Dupraz after #FCLASS ️ pic.twitter.com/YnmAWY9CBP
— Late Football Club (@LateFootClub) April 8, 2022
If he takes responsibility for the sinking, he did not fail to tackle a lack of humility, a word he repeated several times, a symbol of his tension. “We thought too quickly that we were going to win, out of vanity”said Dupraz before talking about a “feeling of waste compared to the start of the match”.
The technician, known for his qualities as a service firefighter with the teams playing their maintenance in the elite, still wanted to remain positive. “I will continue to tell you that AS Saint-Etienne will stay in Ligue 1”hammered the coach arrived in December on the banks of the Loire with the mission to save the club.