<a href="https:\/\/worldsoccertalk.cms.futbolsitesnetwork.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/05/original_yoann-gourcuff-toujours-absent-05027920.jpg"></a><div><figure class="image"><a href="https:\/\/worldsoccertalk.cms.futbolsitesnetwork.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/05/original_yoann-gourcuff-toujours-absent-05027920.jpg"><img loading="lazy" class="alignnone size-large wp-image-140542" src="https:\/\/ds-images.bolavip.com/news/image?src=https:\/\/images.worldsoccertalk.com/webp/WST_20150526_WST_140540_original_yoann-gourcuff-toujours-absent-05027920-600x368.webp&amp;width=600&amp;height=368" alt="original_yoann-gourcuff-toujours-absent-05027920" width="600" height="368"></a></figure></div>
Yoann Gourcuff is France’s soccer enigma. On his day Gourcuff is a mesmerizing presence who makes the game of soccer look ridiculously easy.
Elegant on the ball, creative with an uncanny ability to dictate the pace of a soccer match the soon to be ex-Olympique Lyonnais star (whose departure was confirmed by the club’s owner Jean-Michel Aulas) delighted the masses at the Stade de Gerland with moments of sumptuous skill and made telling contributions in big matches.
It was Gourcuff’s goal against Marcelo Bielsa’s Marseille last October that brought an end to OM’s eight-game winning streak and it was a strike to savour. It also proved to be the last time he found the back of the net for Lyon.
[jwplayer mediaid=”140541″]
Unfortunately for Gourcuff moments of such brilliance were too often sandwiched by periods of injury and controversy.
Lyon’s title ambitions suffered arguably a fatal blow when they lost to Nice in March. If ever a moment encapsulated the feeling of disappointment and despair it was Gourcuff’s reaction to an injury he sustained at the beginning of the second half. After striking a shot high and wide the man who was once seen as the heir to Zidane shook his head, realized his game was up and trudged towards the player’s tunnel without waiting to be substituted. As he disappeared from sight one couldn’t help feel that the Ligue 1 championship had gone with him.
Lyon manager Hubert Fournier couldn’t quite believe what he was witnessing and it took him a few moments to shake off the momentary shock to bring on Mohamed Yattara.
The match unfortunately, but perhaps fittingly was Gourcuff’s final appearance for Lyon. So much promise, so much frustration.
How could someone so gifted seemingly waste away his talent? Gourcuff’s attitude was questioned by <a href="https:\/\/worldsoccertalk.cms.futbolsitesnetwork.com/category/ac-milan/">AC Milan</a> legend Paolo Maldini during the Frenchman’s ill-fated stint in Italy for the Rossoneri.
“Gourcuff in Milan was wrong 100%. His problem here was his behaviour. He did not show an intelligent way to manage himself. When he played here, he did not want to make himself available to the squad.&nbsp;
“He did not start studying Italian immediately. He did not work. He was not always on time. It happened a lot. [There are] things he cannot tell. But he knows what he did”.
“When he came into the game, he did not give himself fully. Less talented players have earned the respect of Milan because they gave everything. Him, he did not. And he knows it. After a while he became foreign to the group.”
A foreigner to the group. If a statement could sum up Gourcuff that would be it. A loner who could never quite fit in.
The most striking example of this was during France’s ill-fated 2010 World Cup campaign in South Africa. Raymond Domenech, highlighted revealed in his book Tout Seul (All Alone) the contempt in which Franck Ribéry held Gourcuff in:
“Ribéry doesn’t like Gourcuff, that’s for sure. Before the Uruguay match, I told Gourcuff: ‘You have the keys to the match, it’s down to you’. The worst thing was Franck Ribéry’s look. Maybe I’m exaggerating, but in his eyes I saw hatred, contempt or jealousy.” 

Amazingly, there were rumours that Ribéry’s jealousy was fuelled by his wife’s apparent ‘admiration’ of Gourcuff.
Moreover it appeared that Gourcuff’s introverted nature, childhood and well to do background was held against him and contributed to the rift between him and his teammates.
On the pitch Gourcuff’s 2010 World Cup in South Africa ended in disgrace as he was sent off after 25 minutes against the hosts in France’s final group match.
French soccer expert Julien Laurens painted Gourcuff as a football loving introvert. A man who could provide genuinely thoughtful insights about the game but too shy to embrace limelight and celebrity that shone on the brightest talents.
Laurens’ article described a player who just wanted to play the game and nothing else. Gourcuff was not interested in the glitzier side of things, the corporate aspects of the game nor was he comfortable engaging with the media. The distractions for some reason or another conspired to the derail his ascent to superstardom.
All in all it details a man not just out of sync with the trappings of modern football but consciously objecting and avoiding the perceived stereotypes associated with the game. Naturally, such an attitude will see one marked out as an ‘outsider’.
His career at Lyon has been blighted with injury problems and that in turn has affected his confidence. Alexandre Marles, Lyon’s performance director, said as much when discussing Gourcuff’s injury problems. A crisis of confidence and persistent injury is a nasty cocktail and is a combination that the skillful Gourcuff has not been truly able to shake off.
Gourcuff has been linked with <a href="https:\/\/worldsoccertalk.cms.futbolsitesnetwork.com/category/arsenal/">Arsenal</a> in recent weeks and it may not be as ludicrous a move as it first appears. He would be part of a wealth of attacking options and maybe at this stage of his career he needs to be seen as part of a unit rather than being the main man.
Turning 29 in July, he still has a few good seasons left in him provided he steers clear of injury of course. On paper signing Gourcuff seems like a gamble worth taking. He is available on a free transfer and with Wenger’s oversight can be eased into the first team picture rather than being thrust into the limelight.
Be it at Arsenal or anywhere else Gourcuff needs to find a place he can truly call home. He hasn’t really belonged since guiding Bordeaux to the Ligue 1 title in the 2008/9 season. Then again he’s seemingly not an easy person to get to know. Falling out with Ribéry because of so called personality issues is one thing but being called out by Maldini on a professional level is quite another.
If a coach or manager can figure out the Gourcuff enigma then they will have an outstanding player on their hands but time is running out to figure out the mystery of what really makes France’s great lost talent tick.
&nbsp;

The strange and curious case of French talent Yoann Gourcuff - World Soccer Talk

The strange and curious case of French talent Yoann Gourcuff

<a href="https://worldsoccertalk.com/2014/04/23/my-experience-at-the-coupe-de-france-final/hi-res-2e72163db4bcf302935f671b67f00164_crop_north/" rel="attachment wp-att-99569"></a><figure class="image"><a href="https://worldsoccertalk.com/2014/04/23/my-experience-at-the-coupe-de-france-final/hi-res-2e72163db4bcf302935f671b67f00164_crop_north/" rel="attachment wp-att-99569"><img loading="lazy" class="size-large wp-image-99569 alignnone" title="hi-res-2e72163db4bcf302935f671b67f00164_crop_north" src="https://ds-images.bolavip.com/news/image?src=https://images.worldsoccertalk.com/webp/full/WST_20140423_CMS_99555_hi-res-2e72163db4bcf302935f671b67f00164_crop_north-600x400_201f263a.webp&amp;width=600&amp;height=400" alt="" width="600" height="400" srcset="https://images.futbolsites.net/wp-content/uploads/sites/6/2014/04/17055502/hi-res-2e72163db4bcf302935f671b67f00164_crop_north-600x400.jpg 600w, https://images.futbolsites.net/wp-content/uploads/sites/6/2014/04/17055502/hi-res-2e72163db4bcf302935f671b67f00164_crop_north-150x100.jpg 150w, https://images.futbolsites.net/wp-content/uploads/sites/6/2014/04/17055502/hi-res-2e72163db4bcf302935f671b67f00164_crop_north-300x200.jpg 300w, https://images.futbolsites.net/wp-content/uploads/sites/6/2014/04/17055502/hi-res-2e72163db4bcf302935f671b67f00164_crop_north.jpg 630w" sizes="(max-width: 600px) 100vw, 600px"></a></figure>
“This Coupe de la Ligue was very important; we owed it to ourselves to shine in one of the domestic cups.”
The comments of Paris Saint-Germain boss Laurent Blanc after their 2-1 victory over Olympique Lyonnais in the League Cup final. I was at the game to witness the final and the state in which French football is currently standing, unfortunately it’s not a state worth boasting.
Having purchased a trip to Paris four months prior to the final, I didn’t have a clue that I would be one of the lucky eighty-one thousand spectators in the Stade De France that night. Once I realized that the cup final landed on the day of my trip, I immediately applied for tickets. After waiting just thirty minutes in a queue of hopefuls, I was sent an e-mail confirming our tickets to the final.
I’ve been to tournament matches before, including a semi-final in Wembley, but never to a foreign final. I was very interested to see if comparisons could be made between the two countries, how the fans conduct themselves for the game, and how the reactions are during the game.
Purchasing the tickets had told me how different things would be from the beginning. Getting a ticket for a semi-final in the F.A Cup often means waiting in long lines. It is considerably different from just going onto the Stade De France website and selecting ‘purchase tickets.’ The laid back attitude would follow all the way to the end, which in my opinion is a better way of watching the game.
I left for the train at 6pm, trying to get there as early as possible to soak in the atmosphere. We arrived at the station twenty minutes later and left the train to enter a festival-like-area. This area had dance music blaring from the speakers and both sets of fans were talking and enjoying themselves. Could you imagine that happening in the UK? Both fans getting together and enjoying each other’s company. Just the mere suggestion of it is laughable. Police were of course on standby if any trouble were to happen, but the last thing anyone wanted was trouble. Everyone had purchased their ticket to enjoy the day, not just to watch football.
After enjoying a couple of beers (€4 for small, €7 for large) we headed to the stadium. I was stopped halfway through by a policeman asking for our tickets, he wanted to see if we were in the Lyon or PSG end. Having no idea where we were going, I joked with the policeman saying ‘we don’t know what fans we are, were from the UK’. The policeman then allowed himself to smile at the joke and said we were PSG fans and we headed straight in.
Stade De France is a beautiful stadium, you could sit anywhere in the stadium and be able to watch the game perfectly. The festival theme continued its way inside the stadium, where if it were not for the posters outside the stadium you would not know a football match was going to be played. Two DJ’s were battling against each other, one was a PSG fan and the other was a Lyon fan. The two DJ’s played music to see who could create the loudest noise inside the stadium, it ended as a draw.
With kick-off time approaching, the stadium filled up rather quickly. The stadium had provided each fan with a flag of the team you were supporting and a pair of clappers (inflatable tubes in which you hit to create a ‘clapping’ sound). Prior to kick-off we were asked to wave the flags in order to create an atmosphere. The result looked brilliant on the screen opposite us and got everyone inside the ground ready for what could be, a brilliant match. What we got didn’t replicate the buzz we delivered.
Lyon had previously beaten PSG on the Sunday before the final. The result doesn’t falter PSG’s title chances, PSG is currently leading the table by seven points with a game in hand. The league match could have been seen as the warm-up to the final, was more of a warm down for the PSG team. Due to the injury on PSG’s talisman Zlatan Ibrahimovic. I was very interested to see what Edison Cavani could do as the focal point of attack and within three minutes in he answered my questions. Brazilian full back Maxwell passed it to Ezequiel Lavezzi, who sent the ball back to him with a brilliant back heel. Maxwell then adventured into the area before chipping the ball over the Lyon keeper Anthony Lopez, giving Cavani the simplest of finishes by tapping it into an empty net.
The stadium erupted with the cries of &nbsp;‘goal, goal, goal, goal’, the early lead felt as if it was already game over. In the 31st minute, Lucas Moura brilliantly took down a Thiago Silva pass in the area where he was then brought down by the helpless Lyon keeper. The foul looked outside the box, but PSG was given a penalty by the referee. A yellow card was given to the keeper, and he was then given the task of saving Cavani’s penalty. Lopez dived the correct way but wasn’t able to get near the brilliant penalty.
When it was whistled for half time, we left our seats and headed to get something to drink. I stood back and watched the fans reactions to the half, it felt as if what had happened was normal and that they were going through the motions to a guaranteed victory. People were on their phones, smoking by the sides of the arena, and acting as if they didn’t just watch the first half to a final, but the first half to a game they already knew the ending to.
The second half went underway with both sets of fans singing, creating a brilliant atmosphere for a dull game of football. In the 55th&nbsp;minute, Lyon struck back with a brilliant shot outside the area by French international, Alexandre Lacazette. Silence hit the PSG fans, where the party atmosphere turned into frustration. In truth, PSG didn’t need to worry after the goal went in, as they were still very much in control of the match.
After Lyon scored I expected a nervy end to the game with Lyon pressuring PSG to make a mistake which would lead to an equalizer. What occurred was the very opposite, it seemed as if Lyon didn’t want to concede another goal and they continued to sit back as they had all game. That strategy was never going to cause PSG any serious problems.&nbsp;I have always considered Lyon a big team in France, they currently are in fifth and 25 points behind the leaders PSG. What I didn’t consider is how far teams have fallen and the current quality of French football.
In the past four seasons, four different teams have won Ligue 1: Olympique de Marseille (2010), Lille OSC (2011), Montpellier HSC (2012), Paris Saint-Germain (2013). Their current positions are as followed:
Olympique de Marseille – 6
Lille OSC – 3
Montpellier HSC – 14
Paris Saint-Germain – 1
Two seasons ago, Montpellier had won Ligue 1; they now lie in 14th&nbsp;and six points above the relegation zone. It shows the unpredictably of the league which is a great thing in football, but also the quality of it.
When the final whistle was blown, after a lackluster final match. I stood up and applauded the newly crowned French League Cup champions. Although the match wasn’t as competitive as I hoped it would be. Seeing the passion of the fans at full time and how the players celebrated. It was a memory which will last in my mind for a very long time.

My Experience At The French League Cup Final

My Experience At The French League Cup Final - World Soccer Talk

Latest news from Lyon. Find out about all the news related to Lyon on worldsoccertalk.com

Lyon - Page 7

France

The strange and curious case of French talent Yoann Gourcuff

News

My Experience At The French League Cup Final