Interview
Sabri Lamouchi
“When players trust you and you trust them, everything is possible”
Lamouchi was part of a hugely talented generation at AJ Auxerre, who took France by storm by winning the title in 1996 under the leadership of legend Guy Roux.
The former French international says players are generally left with an enormous void to fill following the end of their careers, and encourages them to plan well ahead about how to approach that challenge.
As one of the few coaches to have managed teams on three different continents, Lamouchi lists cultural adaptation, empathy and the ability to get your ideas across and create trust as key pillars in becoming successful in different environments.
Despite his huge talent and even though he enjoyed great success during his playing and managerial career, thanks to his humble nature Sabri Lamouchi has managed to stay largely under the radar. As a discreet man who is keen to protect his privacy, Lamouchi – who has always operated without an agent – has kept himself out of the limelight and adopted a fairly low profile in the world of football.
Born in Lyon in 1971 into a large working-class family with strong North African roots with a Tunisian father and French mother, Lamouchi soon learned the benefits of hard work, humility and dedication. He used those qualities to great effect with his eye for the game when he developed his talent, particularly during his time at Olympique d’Alés, where coach Léonce Lavange and the director of the youth academy really triggered his passion for the game.
All of this provided the platform for his highly successful playing career, winning French titles with AJ Auxerre and AS Monaco and captaining Serie A outfit Parma to a Coppa Italia triumph in 2002, although he also endured his fair share of hardship and regrets during his career and later as a coach.
“You always have regrets. Only those who do nothing don’t get it wrong, I would say. One of my biggest regrets was at the 2014 FIFA World Cup with Côte d’Ivoire when we conceded a last-minute penalty against Greece which eliminated us. A draw would have been enough to qualify and then we would have played Costa Rica in the next round,” says Lamouchi, who describes luck as a crucial factor when games are decided by such narrow margins.
“Luck can change the life of a country, a club, or a player, and of course the life of a coach.”
Lamouchi emphasises that it was already clear to him from an early age (18-19 years old) that he had ambitions of going into coaching at some stage. But the former French international, who was capped 12 times by Les Bleus, says players are generally faced with an extraordinarily tough mental and occupational challenge when they approach the end of their careers.
“It is quite unsettling to go from 20 years of a very intense life into a void. You no longer have a club or a contract, and you no longer have a salary, objectives or ambitions. You no longer know what to do. You leave the game without knowing what to do; no training, no plans whatsoever. That is why it is important to prepare for your life after your playing career as early as possible and, above all, to know what you want to do, not necessarily in football, but really you need to know what you want,” says Lamouchi, who says that he did at least have a clear notion of what he definitely did not want.
“What I didn’t want to do was to distance myself from the game. Football is an extraordinary chance. It’s been my entire life and it is a real passion. I am very conscious that I made my passion my job, first as a player and now as a coach. That’s real luck.”
His lack of experience as a coach meant that, when he was handed the reins to the Côte d’Ivoire national team in 2012, it came as a huge surprise to most of the football world. But Lamouchi quickly proved that he was up to the task by steering Didier Drogba and co to their third successive FIFA World Cup finals, and today Lamouchi stresses that it was his time as a player amongst the absolute elite of European football that had groomed him for life as a coach.
“My career as a player served me well because, when you have to deal with world-class players, in certain situations you know more or less what they think – before a big match, before a big competition and when they are faced with big challenges. I knew that because I had had the opportunity to play for big clubs and with great players, and you know what is going on in a dressing room and how the players think.”
Lamouchi is one of a select few coaches to have managed teams on three continents – Europe, Africa and the Middle East – at both club and national-team level. He brings an enormous amount of experience to the table in terms of how to implement coaching philosophies and how to adapt them to different cultural environments.
“The demands of matches, training sessions, the eye for detail, reaching your goals, striving to be the best – it is always the same, be it in Africa, Europe or the Middle East. But it’s the ability to adapt, to empathise with others, to quickly figure out what your plans are and then make them clear to your players which will define whether you will be successful. You have to listen, but it is up to you to take the first step, to approach your listeners and bring them into your world and your universe. When players individually and collectively know what your game plan is, and what they have to do with and without the ball, it makes everything easier. And when they trust you and you trust them, anything is possible if you have well-defined and clear plans,” Lamouchi concludes.
