Stéphane Ruffier spoke for So Foot. He mentions Jean-Louis Gasset, one of his coaches at ASSE. The former Saint-Etienne goalkeeper paints a portrait of the new MHSC coach who will play alongside the Saint-Etienne team in the race to maintain this season.
“He loves his players, he makes you understand that he cares about you and that he has confidence in your qualities” (Ruffier (ex-ASSE) on Gasset)
“When he arrived, he gave everyone confidence and we had an exceptional second half of the season, we almost finished in Europe. The following year, he was able to build what he wanted and we really had a great season (fourth place in ASSE, Editor's note). He loves his players, he makes you understand that he cares about you and that he has confidence in your qualities. With us, he brought back Yann M'Vila, who was not doing well in sport, not well in his life. And he put him back in the light, he gave him back his smile, the desire to play football. And Yann gave it back to him. He has a relationship with his players that I haven't seen in other coaches. Even the player who plays less, he wants to fight for himself. But be careful, sometimes he lost his temper, eh! He put us lower than the ground, but it was always at the right time, in the right tempo. And then it was over.
“When he took over the team, it was a moment in my life when I separated from the mother of my two daughters, I did not see my children. It was a complicated moment and he was there for me a lot.”
One day, he had a good shout and when leaving the locker room, he took my arm and said to me “So, I was throwing some today, did you see that? Wasn't the speech good? » He was talking, he was laughing, he was teasing you, even though he had just ruined you ten minutes earlier. Because for him, it had to be done. It reset the counters to zero. He surrounded himself with Ghislain Printant, who is also an extraordinary person. And Fabrice Grange too for that matter. How many times did we come in at halftime of a game where we were in difficulty, and he would say “Oh guys, calm down!” We are going to win the match. I'll explain. We're going to do this, this, this, this, we're going to score like this. »
And second, it happened as he said. So he also has a huge knowledge of football. He is also someone who pays very attention to you, to your life, to the problems you may have outside of football. It was important to me. When he took over the team, it was a moment in my life when I separated from the mother of my two daughters, I did not see my children. It was a complicated moment and he was there for me a lot. He knew how to have the right words. And he did that with Romain (Hamouma) too. Even when things aren't going well, he's not a guy who overwhelms you. »
