Garcia totally praises Aulas and talks about his rivalry with Juninho

Rudi Garcia spoke in an interview for Le Média Carré. After returning to his time at OM, he did the same on his Lyon adventure. And he returned to the transition between the two clubs with Rhone supporters, who have not forgiven him for anything: “But no, I don't think about it (the rivalry when I arrived). I know the Lyon-Sainté, Paris-Marseille rivalry… I discovered it a little bit in Marseille but not more than that. But I don't think people are stupid enough to catalog. This is really not everyone's opinion. If I could have finished my career in Lyon, I would have finished my career in Lyon” he said before praising Jean-Michel Aulas: “I always dreamed of working with Aulas. I always found him to be one of the best presidents in France. What he did at OL was incredible. The training center, the Groupama Stadium, its own infrastructure…Who has done that in France? Person. With the leaders, we decided to meet the groups of supporters in Lyon. And there indeed, I discovered that having been in Marseille was not going to help me. Maybe I was a little naive. I was told things like 'Come on, we can't do anything else', 'Don't count on us to change your mind'. It's just a fringe of supporters. Today, in today's society, minorities are loud and majorities are silent.”

Garcia praises Aulas and calls Juninho “Iznogoud”!

However, everything was not rosy for him at OL and in particular his relationship with Juninho: “It's only with Juni that things go wrong. Unfortunately, that's why we finished badly. We are autumn champions with Lyon in addition to making a Champions League semi-final and a Coupe de la Ligue final against PSG. Juni attacked me on a personal level and that's not right. I call him Iznogoud. It is the caliph who wants to become caliph in place of the caliph. What he wanted was to coach. I remember going to see the president and telling him, 'it's okay, I'll give you back the keys, you just have to give him the team'. If there had been this harmony…It went well at the start, he's a footballing legend and he will remain one of OL's best players. Respect for that. But where I don't blame him is that no one explained to him what his position was, the role of the sports director… Everything was fine as long as Gérard Houllier was there. He had him as a coach, he was one of the best able to temper him, explain to him what his job was. When we lost Gérard, we lost a great person in French football and a friend but we also lost a moderator for OL. We lost big but it's a shame because in Lyon, there was everything to do even better than what we did.“

Despite everything, he wanted to recognize certain good things in him: “Bruno (Guimarães) and Paqueta, it’s him. Juni knows what he is talking about when it comes to football. What harms him is his constant worry. This concern has rubbed off a little on our Brazilians. Bruno is him, Paqueta is him. It's Iznogoud but it's Caesar too. Relations deteriorated a little when I made Bruno play less because he was injured” he confided before concluding what he would change: “Maybe I would try to talk more with Juni to temper him because we could have won the championship. We still made it halfway through the Champions League, that's not nothing. We beat Juventus, Guardiola's City and we came out against Bayern where luck did not smile on us. My time in Lyon, I have no regrets. It was a magnificent passage in terms of results.“

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