1 Thierry Bonalair, the experienced
Aged 58 and a former professional footballer (Nantes, Auxerre, Lille, Nottingham, etc.), Thierry Bonalair joined the Stade Brestois recruitment unit in 2019. He had previously worked as a supervisor in Lille (2006-2011) and Bordeaux (2011). -2019). “After my career, I launched into the coaching profession. There was a point when I no longer had a job and I had the opportunity to discover recruitment, I liked it.” Based in Nantes, Bonalair has learned over time to have “a slightly different eye, to sharpen it to quickly know if a player has the required qualities or not. When we watch a match to recruit, we are more on the individual, detecting if the player we are watching is capable of bringing something extra to the squad we already have.”
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2 Emmanuel Pascal, the math guy
Assistant to Jean-Marc Furlan “for twenty years”, including three seasons in Brest (2016-2019), Emmanuel Pascal has been part of the SB29 recruitment unit for two years. “I reached a turning point when we were kicked out of Auxerre with Jean-Marc (October 2022), he recalls. Grégory wanted someone to take care of the video, set up the database and that really excited me.” Pascal (40 years old) lives in Troyes, where he is originally from, and also considers himself a “mathematician.” If you put in place processes, figures, filters, you still reduce the error a little. The difference with the others is that I don’t travel. When I watch my matches, I am with my dog at my feet in my kitchen.”
Its role within the cell is to develop internal software created to work better and faster. But also have an opinion on the recruits. “With Jean-Marc, I took care of recruitment a lot, which often earned me a few stabs because I wasn’t a professional player, I was nothing at all. I was getting stoned at first. It was a bit hard but I didn’t make it an ego thing.”
Brother of sports director Grégory Lorenzi, Yannick (35) has “always played football. I started this job as a recruiter during the last six months of my contract when I was a player in Bastia. I was doing that for Sporting and in June 2019, Grégory called me: “We’re moving up to Ligue 1, I’m going to open a structure. If you want to come now, then it will be too late”. Recruiter is something I always wanted to do, from a very young age. I have this passion for watching matches, following players and their development.” Yannick Lorenzi, who lives in Bastia, says “I evolve from year to year, I learn throughout the matches and there are even bonds of friendship that form between us in the cell”.
