Thomas Sammut, the former mental trainer of swimmer and Olympic champion Léon Marchand and who works for the Brest club, has been recruited by the French Football Federation to join the staff of the French women’s team, AFP learned on Thursday from a source close to the FFF.
Following the new elimination in the quarter-finals of a major competition during the Olympic Games this summer and the departure of Hervé Renard, the FFF has decided to create a position “mental coach who is permanently with the selection”with the players of the French team and the new coach Laurent Bonadei, this source said.
Changes within the staff of the Blues
Thomas Sammut, considered a mental trainer of “renown”who notably took care of multiple Olympic champion at the Paris Olympics Léon Marchand, Florent Manaudou and skier Mathieu Faivre, is currently still under contract with the Breton club, which he will leave before taking up his new position.
Furthermore, Bonadei, former assistant to Hervé Renard who was appointed to lead the Bleues after their elimination from the Olympic Games, will be surrounded by Stéphane Saillant to compensate for the departures of the two other assistant coaches Éric Blahic and David Ducci.
Saillant, 52, most recently worked with youth teams for the Saudi Arabian Football Association.
The rest of the technical staff is identical with the same goalkeeping coach, Gilles Fouache, the same physical trainers, Thomas Pavillon and Sabrina Viguier and the same medical staff, according to the source.
A gathering of the Blues should take place in October for two friendly matches, including one against Switzerland.
“This is the last time we don’t succeed”
Asked by AFP about the elimination of the Bleues in the quarter-finals of the Olympic tournament, Jean-Michel Aulas, vice-president of the FFF in charge of women’s football, considered that the French team had not “did not achieve the goal of getting past the quarter-finals. I have to admit, I humbly admit it, even if it’s difficult for me. This is the last time we don’t get there”.
“We had no excuse. There is a huge frustration because everything was there, we had the coach we wanted, we had the players since we had recovered all the injured players that we did not have at the World Cup. Something extraordinary was happening in France with the Olympics. We should have done the same as the others and we did not succeed. But we were able to detect the origin of our problem: it is mental.”supported the former president of OL.
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The new coach has “searched for the origins of what had penalized us during the competitions. And as he has experience as a club and trainer, I found that he had the right profile to break this glass ceiling that we have not managed to break until now”Aulas said.
