Jacques D'Arrigo: “At the Girondins, I ended up in burnout mode, very tired of my second year with the Americans, who were extremely complicated to live with”

For Alternative Football, the former commercial and development director of the Girondins de Bordeaux, Jacques D'Arrigoleft FCGB for Union Bordeaux Bègles. If he did not say much more, perhaps reserving himself for writing “a book”, he confesses that his departure from the Scapular Club was also for his good health.

“If I leave the Girondins, it's because the club is bought, and I end up on the ground… I end up in burnout mode, very tired from my second year with the Americans, who were extremely complicated to live with. And therefore the possibility of bouncing back to a position of deputy general director of the UBB which is in full swing… At the start of 2020, they are leaders of the Top14 with the LOU, which is ultra improbable. This means that you qualify directly for the semi-finals, which has never happened since the creation of the club.

While UBB was heading towards a possible coronation – even if there was still a good part of the season remaining, but that year the club was flying over the championship – the Top14 stopped because of Covid.

“The sporting part of Rugby really surprised me. The training center is crazy. It's really ultra professional. The gym is enormous, the technology behind it too, like video analyses, physiotherapists, doctors… I am very surprised by the level of professionalization, the support on the athletic dimension… I wouldn't say the same thing about the part that I managed, the commercial and marketing part. It's hard to compare with football. I still think that there is a little delay, that there are Top 14 clubs which are also a bit in the stone age, even if it is progressing every day, but given the means which exist, I think it would be a natural movement in the future that it continues to develop […] My departure from UBB? I started on 1^is March 2020, and on March 15 there was Covid. At the end of May, the story was finished, so I was laid off for economic reasons. Rugby is a failure (for me), I haven't even seen a match with an audience, even just a match…”

Transcription Girondins4Ever