Euro Leagues: De Zerbi leaves Marseille & Gael Clichy is in the dugout

0:00This BBC podcast is supported by ads outside the UK. If there was a big red button that would just demolish the internet, I would smash that button with my forehead. From the BBC, this is The Interface, the show that explores how tech is rewiring your week and your world. This isn't about quarterly earnings or about tech reviews. It's about what technology is actually doing to your work, your politics, your everyday life. And all the bizarre ways people are using the internet. Listen on BBC.com or wherever you get your podcasts.

0:40On the Football Daily Podcast, the EuroLeagues with Steve Crossman. Hello there. Welcome to the EuroLeagues. Coming up, we're going to be talking Roberto Deserbi, who has left Marseille. We'll ask what's next for them, what's next for him as well. We've got a brilliant special guest on later as well. The new head coach at Caen, former Arsenal, France and Manchester City defender Gael Clichy, is going to join us with us for the whole show. ESPN's Julien Leroy, Rafa Honigstein and the Athletics' James Horncastle. Let's start with Marseille. It is finally over. Roberto de Zerbi has left. They were thumped 5-0 by Paris Saint-Germain on Sunday.

1:17They are fourth in league and they are 12 points off the top and they were also obviously dumped out of the Champions League. I did enjoy, Jules, the statement from Marseille, which said this, Olympique de Marseille and Roberto de Zerbi, coach of the first team, have announced the end of their collaboration by mutual agreement, almost like sort of a bad B-side, which nobody listened to and will never talk about again. Yeah, although they put also a video out for him later, like a few hours after the statement. That was really nice, kind of remembering all the really good moments because that's the thing.

1:56There have been really good moments for him in there. And we've said many times on the show, haven't we, that it was just the perfect match between a city that just is so intense about its football and lives and breathes and eats football and the manager that is exactly the same. And when two of the same kind of mixes up, obviously sometimes you'll have clashes, you will have highs, super highs where you go really, really high, probably a bit too much. And some lows where you go too low, that probably doesn't deserve to be that low, but still because you're so emotionally involved and committed and almost kind of attracted to each other.

2:35That's what happens. And that's exactly the story of Marseille and the Zerbe, which could have been an amazing story. And at times, really was, because they really connected to the core. I've rarely seen a manager connecting like this with Marseille as a city of football. And then at other times, it was more difficult, but it's also what we expected from the start because as Horny and I have just said many, many times, the problem is they were too similar in a way to last longer than what we've seen in 18 months. And maybe the most fascinating for me in all this story, okay, there's the defeat in Paris.

3:11That's fine. It can happen. The way they lost and got... I bet you weren't saying that at the time when PSG beat them. No, that's fine. No, because five months earlier, they beat PSG in the league as well at the Velodrome. So it can go very quickly both ways. We know that. The way they were knocked out of the Champions League, in the league phase, losing away at Bruges 3-0, and then Benfica with that last-minute goal against Real Madrid, knocking them out, all of that, was really tough to take. But after the PSG game, for him, the Zerbi, to say, I don't understand how my team, my players, the team I pick, in the formation that I choose, the system that I choose, those players that I coach every day, can be so good one day and so bad another day.

3:52And for him to almost admit publicly his own failure in the sense that he could not make sense of how his team could be so inconsistent from one week to another, I think was too much for him. And at the end, he was drained. He was really exhausted by all of this and took responsibility for it in a way, but also really struggled to put his finger on what went wrong when it went wrong. Do you know, Raph, I actually think that of all of the things that De Zerbi said, those two words that Jules just mentioned in his statement, it's exhausting. Sum it up. That's just Roberto de Zerbi's time in charge of most clubs, isn't it?

4:27For everybody. And not only in a bad way, but it is exhausting. Yeah, I think highly strong is probably the way I would describe him. And when so much volatility meets the most volatile club, probably at this level in European football, it's either going to be fireworks or an implosion. and I think towards the letter spell of his time there, it was very much the letter. It didn't really look like a team that still understood what he was trying to do. I find it hard, Jules, and you would have seen more of my say than me, but to understand how somebody who is especially seen as one of the tacticians of the modern game, finds a way or can set up a team in a way that the team don't seem to understand what his ideas were anymore.

5:28Some games, the team look completely lost. And that is something that is, I think, hard to explain. And I wonder if it was slightly self-serving to say I don't understand my team, because it almost suggests to me that, you know, I've done everything, but somehow the team are really strange. Tuchel said similar things when he had really inconsistent performances at Bayern. He would always say, oh, we trained so well. I don't understand how we're not playing well. We did everything in preparation. So it sounds a little bit like that to me, but I don't know if you've seen or heard more from how the players related to him that maybe might explain why we saw just a total breakdown at the end.

6:10Yeah, I think it's really interesting. I think there There were times maybe where it was a bit too complicated for maybe the players that he had and what he wanted to do. I think he felt they had some really good relationship with some of them and also some very difficult ones with others. Mason Greenwood is one of them, of course. Somebody like Benjamin Pavard, for example, who arrived with one of the main signings in the summer from Inter Milan, where Marcel put a lot of effort to go and get a 2018 World Cup winner back home, basically. And he hasn't really worked out for him. Hoiberg will always be the kind of player that managers like De Zerbi likes just for the football IQ in itself.

6:51But you're right, he never really got, I think, the full attention of the whole squad and the whole dressing room. Maybe because he's difficult to work with Roberto De Zerbi. As we've said, he's a guy hard to follow at times. He's a guy that is hard to work with for players, for sporting directors, and CEOs, owners, people above, all of that. But there's also where I don't think he was helped very much by the club. It's that Marseille, because that's what happened since Pablo Longoria has been the CEO, and it's not me having a dig at him. This is the way he works. But every summer, every winter, in every transfer window is 12 or 15 players out, 12 and 15 players in.

7:33This is what they do. They do a lot of trading in and out all the time. And I think it must be very difficult for whoever is the manager to get a bit of stability and consistency when every six months, basically half of your squad changes. James, what does Roberto De Zerbi want, do you think? What does he want? What is the ideal setup for him to thrive in? Because I wonder if he's a bit like Bielsa in that the level of clubs that he manages are on a certain level, right? And they're not the very, very top clubs. Is it possible for Roberto Di Zerbi to exist in one of those environments? Or is what he wants not really gettable at the very top?

8:23Look, I think it's very interesting what Jules was saying about this being a kind of marriage made in heaven on one level in terms of two very passionate entities coming together. There was the famous sort of dressing room speech that the ZB gave after they lost to Ozean in his first season where he showed the players the contract offer from Manchester United that he claimed to have got. And he said, I'm here because I'm passionate about you. I'm passionate about coaching this club in this city. I put this above money, okay? and that is ultimately, I think, Roberto is a football romantic but in terms of what he wants, he wants to win.

9:08He does not want to be typecast as a philosopher where it is, I am about the aesthetic. No, if he's got that particular style of play, it's because he thinks that style of play is the best way for him to win football matches. and he is quite fundamentalist about that although you know I do think it has been quite interesting that you know he he hasn't gone against his principles but he's done stuff he he wouldn't usually do at a football club at Marseille he's played a back three he said he said I would not play a back three unless I thought it was the best thing for this group of players It's not part of me.

9:54I just don't believe in having an extra defender because it means you have one less midfield player and it means you have one less attacker, one of the other. So, look, I mean, if that contract offer that he presented in that dressing room for Manchester United is legitimate, I would kind of question judgment. Why didn't you take that contract offer? Because I think a lot of people, even though they forget how challenging and provocative he was towards the end of his time at Brighton when he said, what is the Tony plan? You know, sort of challenging Tony Bloom, one of the most successful football owners with one of the most successful recruitment operations in recent Premier League history, challenging his ambition.

10:42I think a lot of people were very surprised that De Zerbe's next step wasn't to move up in the Premier League. It was, and I say this with all due respect, Jules, it was to go to Liga and not to go to PSG. It was to go to Marseille. And so he's made some curious choices. You know, after Sassuolo, he went to Shakhtar. After Shakhtar, he went to Brighton. After Brighton, he's gone to Marseille. I think there probably needs to be some reflection on his part about those decisions and I think also it probably reflects what the clubs he thinks he might be able to get to also think about him because they haven't gone for him There's another thing as well I think that probably also played in all these kind of toxic atmosphere at times and I think we mentioned it maybe last week or the week before on the show, is this kind of eternal war with the French media that he had not so much last season when everything was really good or better, suddenly, and they finished second and went back to the Champions League.

11:47And there was this incredible buzz around the team and him. But this season is very different. I mean, he had issues with Jérôme Roten, the former France and PSG midfielder, and Christophe Dugary, the former Marseille forward. and Birmingham legend as well, who on their radio show kept saying a bit what we've just said. It's not really clear what the plan is. He keeps changing the back three, the back four. And they were a bit underwhelmed by what they saw from him, especially considering the reputation. So that's one thing. And, you know, that could be difficult. But also, I've rarely seen a manager at that level changing moods so quickly.

12:28Because one day we had moody Roberto. One day we had happy Roberto. One day we had sad Roberto. One day we had excited Roberto. One day we had, I can't be bothered Roberto. And I'm like, which Roberto is this? Like, what's going on? And I think that sums up really well the whole season. And in a way, for him as an Italian too, it felt like a washing machine at times, you know, and it probably was a bit too much at the end. Just before we move it on to what might be next for Marseille and indeed Deserby, Raph, I'm really interested to know, because he was really heavily linked with Bayern Munich at one point and I sort of wanted to lean into the idea of why a top club might go for him or might not go for him.

13:10Is it possibly something to do with the fact that quite often the higher you go, the less autonomy you get and for Roberto Tazerbi to be the manager of your team, it sort of has to be his way, doesn't it? Yeah, I guess. I mean, from what I heard from Bayern at the time is that they just weren't convinced he was right for the structure. I think there was a sense that if you give it to him, you are in danger of losing a little bit of control. Bayern particularly, but I'm sure other clubs of a similar size are the same. They don't want a manager that is going to be managing the whole club and being in charge of almost everything.

13:51They want somebody who's a coach, who will be part of the existing structure, who will understand that there are checks and balances to his power, who cannot take six or seven people necessarily within the staff because there are people who are already there. And they also don't operate on the basis of changing everything for a new manager because they know chances are one and a half, two years later, you have a new manager, then you have to start again and they don't want that. So that was the feeling. And there's also a sense of pigeonholing, I think, as well. you know there's always um a kind of a mental shortcut you think okay italian managers you know what are they like um it's silly because there's huge differences to the way a carlo and celotti works and roberto deserbi works but i think as far as sort of cutting-edge coaches are concerned you think of conte immediately and you think of deserbi and these kind of coaches the the way they work with super high intensity but volatility, they scare people at certain clubs.

14:53And I think that's worked against him. And I'm not sure that the Marseille stint has really changed that perception or maybe enhanced it and made it more difficult for him to land the job of that kind of magnitude in the near future. James, I have to ask the Tottenham question here. I know it's the EuroLeagues, but he's obviously being linked already. I wonder if the best argument for De Zerbe at Tottenham is it's probably the only thing they haven't tried. You know, they've done the kind of the winner, Jose Mourinho, or the big personalities like Antonio Conte. They've done the sort of the, you know, the kind of club legendy approach in the past.

15:32And they've done the up and coming coach. They've done everything apart from the madcap genius. So maybe now it's time. Yeah, although I do think there are some similarities in approach to Ange, Postikoglu, certainly in terms of how they want their teams to play and believing it is the best way against the judgment of journalists and radio hosts like us a lot when we've said, why are you playing this high line? look I mean De Zerbi has been of interest to Tottenham in the past it's no secret that their former consultant co-sporting director sporting director Fabio Paratici was an admirer of Roberto De Zerbi I think when Paratici was in talks about becoming the sporting director of AC Milan in the summer before he formally came back to Tottenham he was thinking about De Zerbi as being a future coach of of AC Milan.

16:33Paratici is now at Fiorentina. He's not at Tottenham. But those recommendations that he will have made will presumably still be in the memory bank at Tottenham. But I think for everything that Raphael has kind of said, and I think also for the kind of trend that we've seen in the Premier League in this calendar year alone with the decisions Manchester United and Chelsea have made where you could say that both of those ownership groups or executive level manager were challenged by the coach in the press conference. You know, De Zerbi is vocal about what he wants, how he thinks things should be done.

17:19And, you know, he's gone into clubs often with a member of his staff who is not a coach. He's a scout. He's there to guide the recruitment team at the club he goes to on what Roberto likes in terms of which player he likes. Now, that's not necessarily unusual. Graham Potter had Kyle McCauley, for example, and Kyle is now working, I think, for Manchester United, independent of Potter. But, you know, it goes to show that this is a coach who expects an input on recruitment and expects a voice to be heard on recruitment. And we have seen, I think, over the last few decisions big clubs have made in this country that they want a coach to coach.

18:03And that's it. Recruitment is left to the sporting director. It's left to the ownership group. Yeah, we'll use you as a sounding board. But ultimately, the final say is with us. And I think that's the interesting tension, I think, in the Premier League going forward with big clubs when they're looking at managers. because it seems that they are moving away from these managers with big personalities, let's say. Just to finish, Jules, two things. One, I love that Christophe Dugary's got a French football radio show. He's obviously like their Chris Sutton, which I'm very much on board with. He's Jérôme Rotten's one, but he's a guest pretty much.

18:42Sorry, Jérôme. I didn't mean to. I don't want you to offend him. And also, if fans are phoning in to speak to Rotten and Dugary on CIS or CIS, they'll be talking about Habib Bey as a possible successor they will what a link what a link 6-0-6 that's it you know the crazy thing about Habib Bey who I think will get that job right I think it's the first time I try to look it's very hard to look but I believe it might be the first time that a manager is sacked and the week later the week later is re-employed by a team that is better or higher in the rankings or in the table than the team that sacked him.

19:22So imagine being sacked from the team that is sixth in the table because they don't think you're good enough. And then a week later, being hired by the team that is fourth in the same league, in the same table, the team that just, it's just, yeah, I mean, it's incredible. But Abid Bey, former Marseille player, captain, although Paris Bonnebren, obviously, I have to say it there. Still very much highly rated. I think he's a good young coach. some things worked well again others didn't so much but it'd be good for him to to be tested at marseille if there was a big red button that would just demolish the internet i would smash that button with my forehead from the bbc this is the interface the show that explores how tech is rewiring your week and your world.

20:19This isn't about quarterly earnings or about tech reviews. It's about what technology is actually doing to your work, your politics, your everyday life, and all the bizarre ways people are using the internet. Listen on bbc.com or wherever you get your podcasts.

20:40Hello, this is Matt Jolly's Urgent Questions, your daily dose of political mayhem from the heart of Westminster. Order, order. I call Matt Chorley. I'm a supporter of flags. It turns out time is finite. Government doesn't want to be involved in this. I do not think the candidates are frivolous. Matt Chorley's urgent questions. Subscribe to the podcast and you'll get the best bits every day from around five o 'clock. Listen on BBC Sounds. On the Football Daily Podcast. The EuroLeagues with Steve Crossman. It's the Euroleagues. Let's welcome our special guest, the former France, Arsenal and Manchester City defender and new manager of Caen in France's third tier.

21:22Gael Clichy, hello. Good evening, the team. How are you guys? Good evening. Oh, so good. I sort of toyed Gael with the idea of letting Jules introduce you because you two go way back, don't you? Wow, we like dinosaurs, but we know each other for a very long time. Yeah, a very long time. Too long, too long. Right, there's so much we want to talk to you about, about your kind of journey in coaching. Before we do anything else, congratulations on your first head coach job. You're a couple of months in. How much are you enjoying it? Well, it's only been four games and I'm pretty sure with wins, you enjoy it even more.

21:57If you lose, I can understand how difficult it could be. But all the guys have been telling me, you know, it's the best job after being a player and I can only agree with it. You learn every day. Your mind is on the pitch every day, 24-7, and it's a beautiful job. So obviously you need to get the result. But you realise that you can impact people, people's life. I'm not talking about the players only, but about who you have in front of you. And I always like that. So I'm enjoying myself at the moment, yeah. Why Con? What spoke to you about the place and the job? Well, you always want to start really high.

22:38and of course I would have loved to be able to take Arsenal or City as a first job but if you have to be honest one second it's important to start somewhere where you can actually trust the people you have around great facilities and Khan is probably a club of League 1 top 3 team in League 2 with the facilities they have with the history as well and the fans it's close from the feeling you have by being there is close to what I've known in England you know the love for the club and the environment so and it's a club that needs someone without being arrogant trying to bring them back where they belong so that's the challenge that's the job and it's a nice one Go on Gilles I mean I know the story so well there's something that when we were messaging today with Gael he said yeah I'll do the show with you guys tonight it'd be fun and also it would stop me thinking for the 40th time something about the game tomorrow they play Dijon tomorrow which is quite a big game because Dijon are doing well and not that long ago we're in the top flight because I know how obsessive he will get about every detail thinking about all of that and my question really is very simple you worked with Thierry Henry with the under 21s you had a wonderful adventure at the Olympics you had Arsene Wenger and Roberto Mancini and Pep Guardiola as managers and this obsession with details Where does it come from?

24:07And how do you assess all those influences that you had through your playing career and coaching career? Well, if I'm being honest, first of all, from the player I used to be, I never saw myself as a talented player. And I had to be really clear on what I wanted to do. So Cherry used to call it the shadow work, the work that you do when no one sees you. And I've always been fan of this because I do believe with the right spirit and the right commitment and the desire to do well and the right intention, you can have a great career. And this is me. That was me as a player. So, yeah, the detail has always been part of me.

24:47But when you realise how much there is going on when you become a manager, you don't talk about detail, just how you are going to control the ball and who you're going to play against. Now you're talking about who you're going to start in your start 11, and who you're going to play against. How can you hurt the opponent's 11 player? Where is the weakness if there's one? How can you explore that weaknesses? How can you make your players improve? And right now, actually, to stop me from thinking about the game tomorrow, I was with the staff and I showed them how I used to work in servets. So basically, I have a wheel of profiles, which is, I don't know, around the world you have 18 profiles.

25:31And my team, ideally, I would want to have 13 out of the 18. So we went through the team knowing who is who and who is giving you what. Obviously, being in third division, you don't get those top players, but you try to make it work. And in the end, you just try to develop or to map the work around different benchmarks of what you want from each position linked to the player you have at disposal. it takes time but it's fascinating because you realize that when you put themes, thematics, you can actually improve the player. Can you win the Champions League by doing this, being in count? Of course not.

26:13But you can really and surely push to get the promotion. And that's why it's great because you need time. But like I said to everybody, if you want to cook a great meal, you need time. You need to make sure you cook the tomato a different way. You cook the potatoes. and when everything is cooked then you put it all in the same pan and then you enjoy your food. So it's a bit the same. You need time. We don't have much time but the process behind it is just phenomenal. So this is what I like the most actually. Gael, I came and saw you in Newport earlier this season just after the summer and you were just finishing your coaching qualification there and I know that one of the things you did as part of that course, I mean there was all kinds of fascinating stuff like spending time with the SAS.

26:57So I'm really interested to know, because, you know, sometimes all people talk about, you know, you read a rule book and you learn stuff and then you get into an environment and it's difficult that all of a sudden things don't go out the window. What are the things that you are still really clinging on to from those kind of experiences that you had when you were learning? Well, there's so much thing that you can use on a daily basis. But just to mention one, and it's something that Arsene always told me when I told him that I wanted to coach. He told me basically the important thing is to understand that you need the collective goal, objective.

27:33But within the objective, you need to be able to find an individual objective to each of the players. Why? Because if you don't have that, it's difficult to stay connected with the player. And without being connected to the player, you cannot achieve anything. and basically if they want to sack you, they will sack you. So you need to find a way where a top player will see himself winning the Ballon d 'Or next to you, for example. A player who's on the bench will see himself becoming a starter under you and a young player will see an opening about being a professional next to you. and someone who's just left out for, I don't know, a couple of months will start to regain his desire to be a football player again, whatever it is.

28:22And he said, and if you can do this and you can transmit that to all of your players, then obviously you're going to be a great manager. So I'm trying to bring this and, for example, being in Cannes, I told them some of the players, they have six months left on their contract and there's no way I'm going to sit in front of them and telling them you have to win for the club because they're going to tell me, OK, I want to do that, but what the club is going to do for me. So the mindset I'm trying to install in the club because it's first division and you have to find ways, I'm telling them my duty and my only objective is to be able to sit with you in June for you to have free options.

29:00Either you stay with us for one more year because we are in League Two or you go to a better team or you get a better contract. And if we are able to sit at the table in June, and to have that conversation, it means that you would have performed. And if we can reproduce this to 10, 12, 15 players within the squad, then it means that we have a good chance of being where we want to be at the end because if you improve the individual, you will improve collectively. So that's really what I'm trying to focus on because in the end, I think there's a lot of people in today's football that want to make it complex, you know want to make the game complex with different way of expression but in the end if you score one more goal than I score then you won the game and I'm trying to make it as simple as possible for the players because in the end they have to be able to enjoy to progress and to feel something while they're on the pitch this is how I see the the coaching journey that's mine anyway Gerald, in keeping with the culinary metaphor that you used earlier Who are the chefs that you enjoy most?