My dear Alain,
For more than a year that covid has punctuated our lives, we have not had the opportunity to meet. To talk to each other, about everything and nothing. To smile.
I heard you decided to quit. To devote yourself to your loved ones. To take care of yourself.
I know that this cloakroom, this smell of camphor, of sweat, these endless journeys, the atmosphere … All these simple pleasures that have animated your days and your nights for almost 40 years, will miss you.
At the same time, it’s your life since 1983 when Gérard Gili, a former CA Gombertois like you and Robert Nazaretian whom you had faced in the amateur youth categories, welcomed you to the club, to support the training center . Finally, a little by chance, you realized a dream, you this passionate about football, this “melted” of OM.
You never forgot when your dad first took you to the stadium to reward you. It was in Ganay where he was a subscriber, for an OM-Nîmes in 1968 (4-0).
You dreamed of doing like Marcel Prévost and the late François Castellonese, who died too soon, who formed the Olympian medical staff. These two guys who have massaged and restored several generations, Skoblar, Magnusson, Paulo Cézar, Jaïrzinho, passing by Yazaldé, Berdoll, Trésor, Buigues … have certainly influenced you. They have passed on to you the qualities and assets of a good high-level physiotherapist.
Like what, life is sometimes well done.
You quickly took the measure of the task. It is not a profession, but a passion or even a priesthood which requires many sacrifices. You know what I’m talking about. It is one of the rare jobs in which in the morning when you wake up, you say to yourself: “I am going to training”.
Then Gérard Gili “went up” to the pros. You followed.
Your first great memory is the double in 1989. Marseille had been waiting for this since 1972. This goal from Franck Sauzée, this unstoppable “mine” for PSG goalkeeper Joël Bats and the emotions that this strike caused.
Obviously, there is Munich a few years later and this night bike ride with Jean Castanéda the day before the match around 2 a.m., in the alleys of Rottach-Egern, about fifty kilometers from Munich where you were in preparation.
Do you also remember carrying Raymond Goethals on your shoulders, helped by Bernard Casoni, after the victory?
You haven’t forgotten, I imagine, the 3 uninterrupted days of celebration that followed, to the point of arriving without training at the stadium on Saturday May 29 to challenge Paris SG for the title? An inexplicable match, marked by this sudden confidence which invaded you and increased tenfold in you this unsuspected strength to lead you to victory (3-1) and to a 5th consecutive title.
I know that you are marked by the demotion in Division 2 after the tragic events of VA-OM, in 1994.
Just like the surprising words of Rolland Courbis at half-time of this memorable OM-Montpellier (5-4), when everyone expected to feel the walls of the corridors tremble with anger …
You don’t like to dwell on bad memories. You are right. Let’s keep the best. He is so precious. Friendship and complicity. When you see a former locker room again, your eyes light up. You took care of the “fathers” like Abedi (Pelé) or Bruno “Popeye” (Germain) then the sons, André, Jordan or Valère. But what an adventure!
Are you not in the best position to also confirm that a football life takes a lot. Sometimes too much?
You paid for it in person just before Euro 2012 when your heart made you understand that you had to slow down when you had to accompany Laurent Blanc’s Blues in Ukraine.
We could spend hours there. But that sounds a bit ‘old-fashioned, doesn’t it?
Listen to “Muso”, you are shooting the main chapter of your life. But you have enough anecdotes to feed the stories that you can tell your grandchildren ….
You open a new volume with very good years ahead of you. With other pleasures. Other emotions.
And then you know what they said? “Being retired means having nothing to do and having all day to do it …“
Shall we call each other one of these days?
Good road, “Muso”.
And above all, Go OM!
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