So friends, aren’t we here, among ignorant people? Since Tuesday evening, 11 p.m., and the (non) interview of Luis Enrique by Canal+ journalist Margot Dumont, we don’t know about you, but we really have the impression of having been mistaken in our passion and of making a stain on the family photo. Because it seems that we (in the broad sense, media and football fans combined) are too stupid for the PSG coach to deign to spare us his tactical analysis of the match against Arsenal. “I have no intention of explaining my tactics, because you would not understand them,” he said to our colleague.
An outing which he is accustomed to and which logically had its small effect on the web, provoking the indignation of some sports journalists. If he ended up being (a little) more forthcoming at the press conference, taking full responsibility for his team’s defeat, the Spaniard used words strong enough for us to stop for a moment. . Hence this question: do you need to have had a career as a footballer and/or coach to understand the game and its different activities? Just like you would have to have had a Palme d’Or to have the right to say that you know cinema.
“We benefit from opening up to others”
This is an opinion that Régis Brouard, former coach of the Sporting Club de Bastia, does not share. “Margot’s question was relevant, we wanted to know what he wanted to put in place and why it didn’t work. As a coach, I think it’s good to explain things. People are capable of understanding, he judges. It’s like politicians who don’t want to explain this or that decision… They take people for imbeciles, which they are not. We don’t necessarily have to go into detail, but we can at least explain the broad outlines. I think we benefit from opening up to others. »
What Luis Enrique does not seem to understand is that it is not so much to the journalist that he lacks respect (well, yes, but not only) but to all the supporters and viewers who have the right to understand the reasons for PSG’s tactical failure on Tuesday evening. Viewers who, in passing, pay Canal+ and therefore part of the salaries of players and coaches.
As for the encrypted channel, which spends 480 million euros each year to broadcast European Cup matches, it is also entitled to ask two or three questions to the coaches at the end of the match. “He is completely wrong about the fight because these are important moments for football fans,” adds our colleague from the L’Equipe channel Giovanni Castaldi. It’s not so much the journalists he puts in trouble – whether he responds or not, we get paid the same – as the football fans. I think that says a lot about his personality. »
Luis Enrique and the media, I love you, me neither
Moreover, the disinterest, if not outright contempt, that Luis Enrique has for journalists is not new and is public knowledge. The Spaniard never really hid it. Thus, in the documentary devoted to him by the Spanish channel Movistar +, he joked that he would happily agree to reduce his salary by 25% as long as he no longer had to speak to them. So, Luis, naughty? If the converse is not entirely true – we have the same passion but we do not have the same salary –, Tuesday’s episode is not likely to improve the already fresh relations between him and the sports press.
Former fieldside journalist for Prime Video, Samuel Ollivier had the opportunity to interview “Lucho” several times last season. And the exercise is obviously not easy. “He’s the coach I had the most difficulty interviewing because he creates tension when he arrives on set,” he explains. And this regardless of whether he won or lost. He creates a climate of tension, you never know what state of mind he will be in when he arrives. Sometimes it goes well – well, that’s rare – but sometimes we hit a wall. »
Let him do it because a question seems absurd to him, which can happen, why not. But that of our colleague seemed rather interesting and timely. This was also the case for Samuel Olivier who, unlike Léa Salamé who assumes responsibility for trying to “create moments” with sometimes provocative questions, does not prepare his questions to “create a buzz or make him loosen up”.
“My only goal is to obtain answers that enlighten football fans,” assures Ollivier. But even with this approach, the five or six times I interviewed him, he didn’t give me the feeling of being sensitive to that. » “Last year, he criticized us a lot for talking too much about the management of the Mbappé case, for looking for buzz, for wanting to feed the telenovela and for not talking enough about football,” says Castaldi. Yesterday (Tuesday), Margot’s question was 100% football… In fact, he always has a pirouette to say “journalists are idiots anyway, I don’t want to talk to them”. »
Haughty and touchy, football stars?
His love for the less moderate of our profession pushes him, when he has the opportunity, to do without the media to bring his communication to life. We all remember his videos broadcast live on Twitch during the last World Cup in Qatar, where he answered questions from Internet users directly without going through the press. A convenient way to select the questions that suit you and flush the others away. Which doesn’t stop him from using the press when he has a message to convey.
“What makes me laugh is that he is making a documentary with Movistar + to highlight his work and show that he has become the essential part of PSG, that the day before the match against Arsenal, he uses of almost the entirety of his press conference to puff out his chest and say to what extent he is the boss at the club, Giovanni Castaldi bounced back. So when he has messages to convey, he doesn’t hesitate to use us. But when he takes a tactical lesson against Arteta and we just ask him to explain his choices, there is no one left…”
In a certain way, and this is not a new phenomenon, the world of very high level football increasingly conveys a less than stellar image of itself to the general public. From Kylian Mbappé, who retorts that what people think of him is “the least of (his) worries”, to Didier Deschamps, who this summer invited supporters to change the channel if they were bored watching Les Bleus matches , including Luis Enrique, football players quickly tend to switch to the dark side of the force when it comes time for criticism.