Jean-Michel Aulas, legendary former president of OL (1987-2023), recounts how certain informants informed him, via social networks, of certain indiscretions about the nightlife of his players.
Jean-Michel Aulas (75 years old) did not only use social networks as a means of praising OL or making rants. The legendary former president of OL (1987-2023) also obtained some valuable information through his impressive community of more than 650,000 people on X (formerly Twitter).
In an interview with the YouTube channel Carré, the former manager explains that he was regularly informed of the nocturnal activity of certain players by users. A network of informants who came to him and not the other way around, he defends himself.
“My main information network was Twitter”
“I was one of the first to use social networks,” he recalls. “When you have more than 600,000 followers… one was the neighbor of the player who came home at 5 a.m. with a little difficulty, the other had met (a player) in a nightclub… On social networks, that (the messages) can appear collectively but also individually. My main information network was Twitter, which became X.”
“But I didn’t do it in the form of an investigation,” he assures. “People, because they liked me and liked the club, thought they were serving the cause of the club. The main example is Sidney (Govou), we have always been very close, he is a so smart boy and he’s a force of nature. He could go out and score the winning goals the next day. It would have been stupid of me to treat him like someone who wasn’t capable of doing that. We’ve always had a good relationship.”
Asked to tell some more specific anecdotes, Aulas did not want to compromise some of his former players. He remained more vague. “There were neighbors of players who, when they were able to come home tired, helped them get home. These are very intimate things,” he smiles. On the other hand, he denies having integrated certain telephone operators to monitor the activities of these troops. “It’s false,” he brushes off. “Besides, I wasn’t trying to find out. People were doing it because they believed they could be of service to the club.”
