Player and Sports Director who became Legend at ASSE, Dominique Rocheteau is enjoying a well-deserved retirement. The former French international spoke in the columns of the Team on his 70th birthday. Excerpts.
Dominique Rocheteau: “As a kid, I really liked my gym teacher and I wanted to be like him. But as I would not have gone far in my studies, I would have taken over the family oyster farming business before Anthony, my younger brother. A boarder in Royan from the age of 11, I returned home in the summer to go out to sea in the morning in the Oléron basin, where all the oyster beds are located. We had lunch on the boat and came back in the afternoon. This marked me. I would have liked to practice this profession which is tending to disappear. This is why I am happy to see my nephew David take over from my brother. It thus inaugurates the fourth generation of Rocheteau oysters.”
Rocheteau, pleasure above all
Dominique Rocheteau: “The demands never made me move forward. The pleasure of playing, yes. In the morning, I got up to have fun playing football. At 16, when I left my boarding school in Royan, located two hundred meters from the beach, for Saint-Étienne, a town full of miners, it was a shock, no more ocean or sweetness of life. But the desire and the pleasure of playing took over.
Collective learning at ASSE
Dominique Rocheteau: “It was at AS Saint-Étienne that I was taught that football is a team sport. I then also took great pleasure in achieving a great cross or a nice pass. If I left for Paris-SG (in 1980) to play center forward, I never had this obsession with the goalscorer. I was not a “killer” like Bernard Lacombe. When I end my career, I don't know how many goals I have scored in total.
Today, I have the impression that footballers play for stats. This bothers me a little, because I remain convinced that, even in modern football, you do not obtain long-term results without this notion of collective. This is what happened in Saint-Étienne in the 1970s.”
The takeover of the Greens
Dominique Rocheteau (Ex-ASSE): “English clubs are all bought by foreign capital. If Saint-Étienne wants to return to a certain level, it has to go through that. Afterwards, it's all a question of values. Outsiders can keep those of the Greens, being aware of their history.”
