Stéphane Moulin Interview: Life After Football, Coaching Future, and Managerial Experience

Stéphane Moulin will experience a special moment, Monday November 27, 2023 (8:45 p.m.), in front of the Angers – Caen match. The emblematic former SCO coach (2011-2021) continued his career at Stade Malherbe before leaving two years later due to a “human relationship which [s’était] degraded” with Olivier Pickeu, the man who had appointed him to Angers and recruited him to Caen.

Stéphane Moulin decided to take a break following this decision. He gave us a long telephone interview this Wednesday to look back on his life off the field, talk about his desire to return to action and discuss the news of his former clubs.

Stéphane, how are you?

It’s not too bad. I am learning to live without managing a group of players, without being on the field. It takes a little time for all that, but I keep busy in other ways.

Do you miss football?

Obviously. We manage to see it, we manage to be there, but we don’t practice it. This is where the lack lies. We must make do.

It seems like you are experiencing this situation. However, it was your decision.

I don’t regret my decision. We sometimes make decisions that we would have made at “normal” times. I made this decision knowingly. I suffered the consequences, but I knew it. Without calling into question the choice I made, between knowledge and living, it is not quite the same thing. For me, there is no surprise in this lack. I left football temporarily, I hope, but I had to make this decision for other reasons.

“The reconstruction is long”

Is the life you lead the one you imagined without football? Do you discover anything else?

For some time now, I have embarked on a project on the theme of management, which has always fascinated me. I am in contact with companies, schools, and soon sports clubs to provide my managerial experience. What interests me is giving keys to managers, to future managers, to business leaders. In all humility, I want to transmit, to bring, to exchange on what I have experienced. It takes time and it occupies the mind. This is exactly what I’m looking for.

Does the break allow you to rebuild yourself, at least partially, following the death of your wife?

I have to do it, because I’m not alone. It is important. I am still in a rebuilding phase. Time, obviously, is an ally. But the reconstruction takes a long time. It’s not a snap of the fingers that suddenly makes us move on to something else. As a man, I’m rebuilding myself, I’m trying to find new interests. You have to be active because there is nothing worse than inactivity to rebuild yourself. That’s what I’m trying to do. For the moment, I would say that I’m doing pretty well.

“The most important thing is with whom and how”

Will you soon be coach of a Ligue 1 or Ligue 2 club?

Or elsewhere (smile). The level is not determining or essential. I hope one day I can do what I love. Afterwards, there are many things that are important to me. It’s difficult to say, today, that I will pack my bags to go to the other side of France. I secretly hope to get back into football.

You have to try not to stay out of the game for too long. I’m not there yet. In Caen, I resumed relatively early (following the death of his wife in January 2023, editor’s note). That didn’t stop me from spending the last five months with great professionalism and enthusiasm. It hasn’t gone away, that’s for sure. Afterwards, you also have to find the right project. It’s not where, it’s with whom and how. That is the most important.

Would you be willing to coach at a non-professional level?

Of course. I lived a dream that many of my colleagues did not have the chance to live. I had the chance to coach in Ligue 1 for six years, I coached in Ligue 2… It’s much more rewarding, sometimes much more exhilarating when you coach in Ligue 1, but the passion remains the same, the game remains the same. I started in CFA, I never imagined I would reach the level at which I coached. Above all, I’m not afraid to go back as long as I can make a living from my passion.

“In football, the stories are always a little crazier”

A nod to history, it’s your assistant who coaches Stade Malherbe. Do you have a regular exchange with Patrice Sauvaget?

Before being my deputy, he is my friend. For me, it doesn’t have the same value. Obviously, I follow what he does, I talk to him regularly on the phone. We are talking about it. In football, the stories are always a little crazier, or a little more bizarre, than elsewhere. I think he would never have imagined finding himself on the bench, in Angers, coaching Caen. It’s the vagaries of football that sometimes make the stories funny.

If, tomorrow or the day after tomorrow, you find a coaching position, will it be with Patrice Sauvaget and Serge Le Dizet on your staff?

There are two conditions there: find a club and that they agree to join me. Of course, if I were to one day go back somewhere, in a new project, I would like it to be with them.

How do you view the match between Angers and Caen on Monday?

I’m not going to say that I’m happy not to be at the head of Stade Malherbe to come back and play against Angers, because I would have preferred to continue the project for which I had come. It’s a certainty. But obviously, it’s a very special match for me. I don’t regret my decision, but I regret not having completed the project, because the climb was real. My friend will be on the Caen bench, but SCO Angers will remain my flagship club.

Stade Malherbe must leave you with a special feeling. There were ultimately more negatives than positives, even though something was starting to take hold…

I agree. It’s very ambivalent, that’s why the choice was difficult. I felt, in the second year, that something was being born. People did not arrive in August this year. They were already there last year. They got into the game and thought that this year was going to be the right one with the arrival of an experienced coach, capable of bringing a Ligue 2 team up to Ligue 1. Last year, the mayonnaise was in taking. My passage would have been a failure if it had not worked out sportingly. It was not the case. We were on time. This is what leaves me with a taste of unfinished business.

I will also never be able to forget the drama I experienced in Caen. No one can do anything.

“Football remains very random”

Were you annoyed to see your successor point out your team’s defensive record last season?

I certainly don’t blame Jean-Marc Furlan. He did not speak out against me or my staff. It was more of a way to find an axis of defense, precisely (smile). I put it down to a little moment of confusion. There’s not much that makes me react, but when I don’t think it’s fair, I say it. I said it as calmly as he could say it, without animosity.

Were you surprised to see Jean-Marc Furlan dismissed so quickly during the season?

Yes. It seems to me that a journalist wrote that no one said his arrival was a bad choice. He is right. There is a difference between theory and the field. Sometimes you have a coach who is successful in one place, not another. For what ? We don’t always explain it. It’s not easy to arrive in a context you don’t know. I thought that the club was back on track and that the team was going to continue a progression which was becoming natural with an experienced coach to bring the teams up to Ligue 1. Football remains very uncertain. I was even more surprised after this excellent start to the season.

What is the problem with Stade Malherbe?

If it were so obvious, I think the situation would have already been found! I’m not into it, I can’t say. When things don’t go well, problems pile up. There is one word that always comes up in these moments, it is trust. When I watch the matches, I see that some players have lost confidence. It is a disease that becomes contagious. If you don’t take care of it, you can’t get anything better. The biggest job of Patrice (Sauvaget) currently, and certainly of a future coach, is first and foremost to treat this disease.

“Caen has nothing to envy Angers individually”

Are you surprised that Angers is second in Ligue 2?

From what I saw at the start of the season, yes, because they didn’t get off to a good start. But there is a coach (Alexandre Dujeux, editor’s note) who was able to put things in place, a coherent collective, a line of conduct that cannot be denied. They have, through the collective, started off on something solid. There are matches that they won with mastery, and matches that they won with a little success. It is necessary.

Today, they are where they deserve to be. There are teams that seem less strong to me than last season. I’m thinking of Saint-Etienne, Bordeaux, Caen for the moment. I don’t see teams dominating the championship, as Le Havre or Sochaux were, in the first part of the season.

Will it be difficult for Caen to break its streak of matches without a win in Angers?

I know that Caen is capable of winning in Angers. I’m convinced. The Angevins’ biggest mistake would be to think that they are going to face a team that hasn’t won in ten games and that, therefore, it should do it. I don’t think they will fall into this trap. Otherwise, they will suffer great disillusionment, because this Caen squad is built to be in the top five. You don’t win four games in a row randomly. In terms of the individual value of the players, I think that the Caennais have nothing to envy of the Angevins.

Stade Malherbe is a club where magnificent things can happen. There is an exceptional stadium, magnificent working conditions, a wonderful public, people who work well, a shareholder who knows what he is doing, who knows what he wants, who is from the area. There is everything to succeed.

Will you exchange a warm handshake with Olivier Pickeu, if you meet him on Monday?

I said, I don’t have a problem with anyone. I just decided to leave because it’s better to stop while there’s still time. I stick to what good happened. There was more good than negative. At the end of last season, we shook hands. There are things I don’t forget, in one sense or another. I will never forget that it was him who allowed me to coach a professional team.

In 17 years (the time when Olivier Pickeu hired Stéphane Moulin at SCO, editor’s note), there have been changes. They concern everyone. There are things in life that make us different, that change us. This is what makes some stories last forever and others stop. This is not to call into question what happened before.

Follow all the news from your favorite cities and media by subscribing to Mon Actu.