a new methodology for finding a collective

Fabio Grosso during his first training with OL (Photo by JEFF PACHOUD / AFP)

Having arrived at OL less than a week ago, Fabio Grosso has not yet made his mark. However, the Italian coach has already changed some habits.

As during his presentation on Monday, he held the quarter of an hour allocated to the press all in French on Thursday. Fourteen years after his departure, it’s almost as if he hadn’t leftOL. But it is clearly not on the media part that Fabio Grosso is expected, even if the example Peter Bosz had demonstrated that a mastery of the language of Molière was not necessary to convey messages.

On Thursday, the Italian coach again put many after those during his presentation. The difference is that four days have passed since then and he has been able to get to know and understand his squad a little more. “I found a very serious group, with very available people. I am confident for the future,” he enthused in front of the audience of journalists.

“We don’t do things to annoy someone”

In the space of a few sessions, Fabio Grosso is obviously not going to revolutionize everything. But this first week of discovery had the merit of seeing the Italian break with what was done before. When some around the club described the situation as “Club Med” recently, the Italian touch changed all that with this double training session on Wednesday. And this does not seem to be just a trial run in these times of discovery.

Like Italian rigor and its reputation, Grosso wants ambition and sweat. “It was very well received by the locker room. We are obviously going to do things that will be a little less popular, but they will be things that will be useful to the group, to the club, to raise the level. We do things that we thinks you’re the best to grow. It’s not doing things to annoy someone. We’re starting to know each other, there’s a good state of mind even in the current difficulty. There’s the awareness that there’s You have to work hard.”

Grosso focuses on small groups and quick transitions

With their new coach, the players of theOL are going to be served and novelty is necessarily conducive to acceptance. We will have to come back in a while to see if the smiles are still there. The revolution is obviously not complete and will not happen in a snap of the fingers on Saturday at Brest. If he wants to break away from Laurent BlancFabio Grosso knows that we must be pragmatic in these first steps together. He is not going to turn everything upside down in Finistère despite his appetite for young people and statuses which do not necessarily have his consideration when putting in his best training. “We want to be a team, we need common values. We will then add tactical and technical ingredients. We must not start backwards.”

However, if he did not wish to once again speak out about the tactical aspect of his philosophy, the Italian coach has already laid the foundations of his desires. “Defending is fundamental because a team that wants to play well must first think about defending well.“ Throughout the week, work in small groups was carried out, as was ten against ten on Wednesday. What emerged above all concerns Grosso’s desire not to have sterile possession, but rather a game with rapid transitions where touches of the ball are not multiplied, at least in the first 40 to 50 meters . “I have a technical and tactical methodology, I like my team to move, for there to be a relationship between the players, to attack the spaces. You have to use the players to create the spaces. If they are already there, you have to attack them. For all that, you have to defend well so it’s a mix of things. But all these things are based on a common value of the team.”

A communication coach above all

With deputies like him coming from the other side of the Alps, it’s difficult to make yourself understood at the moment. But this notion of group also applies to the staff. Thursday, Cedric Uras and Alexander Honorary played the translators for the warm-up at the start of training. This mutual aid which begins off the field must be felt on the green rectangle. Arrived only twenty days agoOLErnest Nuamah has already observed these changes compared to the old staff. “The big difference is that the coach wants a collective game, to form a group. His objective is that we play well together to obtain results and not so much that we have individual results.”

This is perhaps the most colossal project of the start of this mission for Fabio Grosso. L’OL showed little or no such collective enthusiasm. We saw it again against Le Havre, it was above all through individual decisions that the Lyon danger came. At a time when he wants to repair heads, Grosso also knows that the tactical part will have a big impact on this collective state of mind. As a follower, the 2006 world champion will go through communication, even if it means “sting, because everyone can improve”.