Technical and Tactical Coaching in French Professional Football
Teams Between 1942 and 1990
Laurent Grün
In Staps Volume 114, Issue 4, 2016, pages 19 to 27
ISSN 0247-106X
ISBN 9782807390829
Available online at:
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------https://www.cairn-int.info/journal-staps-2016-4-page-19.htm
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------How to cite this article:
© De Boeck Supérieur | Downloaded on 10/04/2022 from www.cairn-int.info (IP: 82.77.225.253)
Powered by TCPDF (www.tcpdf.org)
Electronic distribution by Cairn on behalf of De Boeck Supérieur.
© De Boeck Supérieur. All rights reserved for all countries.
Reproducing this article (including by photocopying) is only authorized in accordance with the general terms and conditions of use for
the website, or with the general terms and conditions of the license held by your institution, where applicable. Any other reproduction,
in full or in part, or storage in a database, in any form and by any means whatsoever is strictly prohibited without the prior written
consent of the publisher, except where permitted under French law.
© De Boeck Supérieur | Downloaded on 10/04/2022 from www.cairn-int.info (IP: 82.77.225.253)
Laurent Grün, «Technical and Tactical Coaching in French Professional Football Teams Between 1942 and 1990», Staps 2016/4 (No
114) , p. 19-27
LAURENT GRÜN
Université de Lorraine (Metz),
professeur agrégé d’éducation
physique et sportive
laurent.grun@univ-lorraine.fr
Technical and Tactical Coaching
in French Professional Football Teams
Between 1942 and 1990
Laurent Grün
© De Boeck Supérieur | Downloaded on 10/04/2022 from www.cairn-int.info (IP: 82.77.225.253)
evolved from being experimental into a more precise and assumed reflection led by the National
trainers. The more famous National teams such as Brazil, England and Germany have been the main
reference point for this change. However, until the 1980’s, the focus was less on copying methods of
technical training than on following the way these national teams used to play, even at the club level,
although this was irrespective of the quality of the players available. Despite some innovative practices employed by the likes of Paul Frantz (RC Strasbourg) or José Arribas (FC Nantes) during the
1960’s, the methodology of training remained fragmented and the technical field and the tactical
field were, for a long period, considered separately. The international outcomes for French football,
both at the club level and for the national team, resulted in general concerns over the standard of
play. Even so, it was only during the 1980’s that the technical and tactical aspects of footballers’ training begin to be dissociated in order to be systematically considered, even though diverse influences
emerged during the 1970’s such as Stefan Kovacs, head coach of the French team between 1975 and
1973, and Robert Herbin, coach of AS Saint-Etienne. Since the 1980’s, the West German coaches
have influenced the National technical board, which has decided to train French coaches according an integrated method, mixing technical, tactical, and physical, as well as psychological considerations. The role and the function of the coach have been changed: from a single game technician,
he has become a strategic coach as well as a creator.
Keywords: Football, Training, Coaching, Technical, Tactical.
1. Introduction
Coaching gradually became an obligation
within the best French teams from the 1920s
but, despite the introduction of professionalism in 1932, this practice became neither
serious or coherent (Wahl, 1989). During the
Occupation, paradoxically, the French Football
Federation created in 1942 national courses for
French coaches to improve the situation and
these became obligatory in order to coach a
professional team. Certification was obtained
only after passing demanding specific tests but,
despite the knowledge acquired during these
DOI: 10.3917/sta.114.0029
courses, the coach still had to define, empirically and scientifically, training fundamentals
when he arrived in his club.
After the Liberation, the coaching of French
professional football teams explored different
ways of working through its annual courses for
football coaches, which taught future coaches a
set of technical and tactical knowledges (Grün,
2011) and from 1990, the National Technical
Direction confirmed coaching proposals that
associated technical training and tactical training (De Taddéo, 2003). This article will show in
what ways and how the coaching of French professional football teams evolved between 1942
© De Boeck Supérieur | Downloaded on 10/04/2022 from www.cairn-int.info (IP: 82.77.225.253)
Abstract: Since 1942, the technical and tactical training of French professional football coaches has
Laurent Grün
© De Boeck Supérieur | Downloaded on 10/04/2022 from www.cairn-int.info (IP: 82.77.225.253)
and 1990. In addition, it also aims to distinguish between coaching process and training
process, because coaching and training can’t
easily be dissociated (Day, 2016). We will consider, according to the German conception,
that coaching is a scientific endeavour (Krüger,
2016) and we will also subscribe to the notion
that the coaching is about building an interindividual relationship between the athlete and
the coach (Loudcher, 2016). These two dimensions, the use of science, and the inter-individual approach, constitute our discrimination
axes. After the 1920s, the physical dimension remained a priority in the coaching programmes of professional teams and technical
work also became an important element while
the tactical approach, less fundamental to these
programmes, was mainly done through theoretical explanations.
This article is informed by Georges
Boulogne’s personal archives. He was the former Director of French Football National
Technical Direction between 1970 and 1982
and he had been national instructor since 1956.
His archives contain annotated statements of
several technical meetings for professional
coaches since then. Semi structured interviews
were also conducted with former coaches and
famous players of this period to provide qualitative data. In order to cross reference our
sources, we will analyse coaching in the professional press, notably Les bulletins de l’Amicale
des entraîneurs published since 1947, which had
become l’Entraîneur français au service du football
in 1954. We will also study specialised press like
France Football, created in 1946.
2. Technical Training
Before 1942, technical training exercises
were always realised without opposition and
at moderate speed. According to Georges
Boulogne1 (Interview dated October, 28th
1998), from the Liberation, the increase of
ball work contributed to technical progress.
Indeed, it allowed greater rehearsal on a larger
scale. But multiplying ball work was not immediately enough: in France Football, 174 (July 19th,
1949), we can read: ‘Coaches tear their hair out
when we talk to them about technique because
our players, even the best of them, don’t master it at all.’ In the same article, the former foreign player Emile Veinante, who was coach for
OGC Nice in 1949, added to this gloomy picture arguing that ‘technique is good but it is
bad when players apply it during the match.’
If technical execution didn’t work, it was probably due to the lack of opposition and the static
way the instruction was applied during training. In a match, passes were done at a maximum speed because of space, time and events.
These shortcomings were not something new:
according to Gabriel Hanot2, ‘on the technical side, the French players have never
been brilliant’ (Bulletin des entraîneurs de football, 16, June-July 1953). That’s why for struggling against these weaknesses, he promoted
technical gesture like ‘the good 30-metre pile
driver’ in annual national coaches courses.
Regarding the period of the Two World Wars,
technical elements became a more important
part of training although the physical emphasis remained high (Grün, 2010). These measures were still inadequate and French players’
technique remained low in the sixties. Georges
Boulogne underlined the variety and the precision of long passes, the goal shots or body and
head play. To improve this last technique, concrete solutions were proposed:
‘More difficult exercises like dynamic games
(tennis-football on large areas) and opposite
sets (3x3 in the penalty area) must replace
1 Georges Boulogne is a very important person in the history of French football. National Instructor, he was responsible of the selection of the National French team of Football between 1969 and 1973: he was the man in charge of the National trainers’ seminars
between 1956 and 1980.
2 Gabriel Hanot is another key person of the French Football: he is considered as the “father of the French trainers” by the specialized press.
© De Boeck Supérieur | Downloaded on 10/04/2022 from www.cairn-int.info (IP: 82.77.225.253)
30
Technical and Tactical Coaching in French Professional Football Teams Between 1942 and 1990
This advice stimulated a desire to identify
practical approaches and coaches complicated
training in order to get players fit for matches
with more technical movements: this had not
been the case before. At the end of the 1960’s,
Georges Boulogne and the national instructors in charge of coaches before 1970 (birth of
NTD), were unanimous that:
‘Work intensity is the most important (...). Our
football really needs now a lot of vitality and
dynamism, with respect to any other quality.’
(Statement of big leagues coaches meeting, June 9th
1969).
© De Boeck Supérieur | Downloaded on 10/04/2022 from www.cairn-int.info (IP: 82.77.225.253)
In fact, technique and physical work had to
be associated in order to solve training problems. Players had to stop working separately on
technique with the help of juggling exercise
at moderate speed: on the contrary, they had
to use technique at a high intensity and pace.
National instructors, led by Georges Boulogne,
recommended a search for useful solutions.
‘Looking for the effective pass quickly helps
the possessor of the ball (support call) which
also addresses forward calls. Anticipation
and collective technique must be developed.’ (Statement of big leagues coaches meeting,
September 7th 1964).
The pass stimulated further attention. The
ball carrier and the player due to receive the
ball had henceforth to share the systemic analysis of the potential pass. That’s why national
instructors advised working on passes in a game
context during training and proposed tactical
exercises (2 against 1, 3/2, 2/2, 3/3...). They
must be directed on the football field and aim
to identify the target player.’
These technical rehearsals were fundamental in player training until 1990 when
the NTD advised mixing technique and tactics. That’s what is revealed by Guy Roux,
AJ Auxerre coach, who noted: ‘We work the
technique all the year’ (France Football, 1735,
July 10th 1979). The technical aspects of training evolved with more movements and speed,
especially after the sixties, but without any
scientific references. Thus, until 1990, the
coaches delivered their knowledge through formal speeches without any discussion with their
players (Grün, 2011). As a result, in the French
clubs of football, the training was considered
more as a technical one than as a general
coaching.
3. Tactical training
Gréhaigne (2014) considered that if strategies are individual or collective decisions
coming from a common reference, tactical
action, which consists in coordinating strategies, takes place in matches or on the training
field. Relinquishment of the WM game system
in order to strengthen defences and other tactical problems were discussed during national
trainer courses from the 1950’s. However, the
implementations of this kind of reflection were
poorly realised according to Gabriel Hanot
(Bulletin des entraîneurs de football, 16, June-July
1953). The trainer continued to teach his players with theoretical explanations on a blackboard and the football team tried to apply
them during friendly matches. In the 1960’s,
French football sank into a deep crisis due to
the poor results obtained by the national team
and clubs in the international competition and,
as a result, trainers and their training methods were questioned. Although, after 1958, the
FFF, having dispatched its instructors to each
World Cup edition to analyse the best teams
had, during courses, tried to teach fashionable
tactics to candidates and professional coaches,
French football rarely innovated, emulating
only what had succeeded abroad (Saint Martin,
1999). Despite that, a few coaches tried new
approaches.
Paul Frantz, for example, aspired ‘not
to delimit players with playing schemes prepared in advance’ (Le miroir des Sports, 1042,
September 28th, 1964). He was a physical
© De Boeck Supérieur | Downloaded on 10/04/2022 from www.cairn-int.info (IP: 82.77.225.253)
usual juggling sets, alone or by two.’ (Statement
of big leagues coaches meeting, September 7th
1964).
31
Laurent Grün
© De Boeck Supérieur | Downloaded on 10/04/2022 from www.cairn-int.info (IP: 82.77.225.253)
education teacher at CREPS3 of Strasbourg and
the environment in which he taught influenced
him considerably. He remained particularly
focused on the player and his skill. His initial training played a key role in his approach
because the innovative work on teaching team
sports, initiated by Robert Mérand4 at the
National School of Physical Education and
Sports in the 1960’s, was taught there (Mérand,
1952, 1959). From 1964, at the RC Strasbourg,
he underlined the psychomotor role of the
players5 and defined their socio-psychomotor
role within the team organisation (Interview
dated October 31th 2001).
Innovation supposes the empowerment
of the player to take initiatives with the support of psychomotor capacity development.
In fact, Paul Frantz introduced during the
coaching some systematic confrontations in
games. Technical and physical conditions were
included but they were not suitable enough
to solve the problems which occur in a football match in terms of time, space and events6.
Taking references on the new conceptions
of French physical education which begin to
spread out, Paul Frantz delivers these ideas
to coaches: what it is very new. Only another
coach processed in the same way in the 1960’s:
José Arribas, at FC Nantes, which he brought it
title of France champion in 1965 and in 1966.
The game style employed by the team and created by the coach gave rise to laudatory comments. It also became the brand of the club:
‘José Arribas’ or ‘game made in Nantes’ (Faure
& Suaud, 1999). Arribas’ style promoted fast
passes, the players speed and constant motion
with or without ball. The Nantes’ coach introduced a component concerning the mental
activity of the players and their ‘clever’ attitude
(Faure & Suaud, 1998), which was close to
Frantz’s conception. It was also the same kind
of situation which the players of Nantes applied
during the training, to develop initiative and
inspiration. This conception announced the
beginning of educational principles of the
zonal marking, as Carlos Garcia Marti’s article
deals with in this volume, which was adopted by
European teams from the 1990’s. Jose Arribas
proposed some exercises to allow players to
resolve together tactical problems:
‘Other exercise: showdown between four
attackers, and 2 midfielders on one side, and
the four full-back players, defending four
goals, to accustom the latters to support better
and to cover themselves» (Football Magazine,
66, July 1965)’.
Contrary to most coaches, Arribas and
Frantz were innovators. But coaches didn’t use
the reduced oppositions method because their
main focus was that of the entire team and not
the little groups that were supposed to be used
to organize the game system. Only gradually,
the other coaches associated tactical work and
technical work.
In 1974, the NTD welcomed its German
counterpart in order to benefit from its expertise because the German national team had
successively won the Europa League in 1972
and World Cup in 1974. Helmut Schön, the
German coach ensured that Rhineland coaches
underlined the concept of intensity thanks to
the development of confrontation during training: ‘In France, we want to practice by ourselves
without an opponent while, on the contrary,
German players do everything with opposition’
(Personal notes of Georges Boulogne excerpt from
the meeting between the NTD and German coaches,
November 4th and 5th 1974).
3 Regional Centre in Physical Education and Sport.
4 Robert Mérand (1920-2011) was a leader in the world of physical education, creating a new paradigm of apprenticeship consisting
in learning technical skills from the game situation instead of the contrary.
5 Paul Frantz don’t use the words “psychomotor” or “sociomotor” during the period 1964-1966. In contrast, as a PE teacher, he must
have certainly known Pierre Parlebas’ works on the “socio-motricity” developed from 1967, as well as the works on “psychomotricity”
from Jean Le Boulch which largely spread at that time in France. He used them a posteriori to depict the conceptions he developed during the 1960’s.
6 P. Frantz brought numerous innovations in training: this has been confirmed by contemporary sources like the journalist Robert
Vergne (Football Magazine, 67, August 1965) or the former professional player Jean-Paul Scheid in the 1960’s (interview, 20 May 2005).
© De Boeck Supérieur | Downloaded on 10/04/2022 from www.cairn-int.info (IP: 82.77.225.253)
32
© De Boeck Supérieur | Downloaded on 10/04/2022 from www.cairn-int.info (IP: 82.77.225.253)
The French NTD relayed these rules to professional trainers who, at the same time, began
to develop tactical skills from the beginning of
the 1970’s. Stefan Kovacs, AJAX Amsterdam
coach who made his team European Champions
league winner in 1972 and 1973, was hired by
the FFF as national coach, to teach his tactical conceptions. Before the end of his term in
1975, he noticed: ‘We begin to rehearse tactical movements. It’s good. We need to rehearse
match pieces 20, even 100 times’ (Statement of
Div 1 and Div 2 meeting, September 22th 1975).
Progress was starting, even if Georges
Boulogne confessed that it was hard for the
NTD to determinate a real training programme: ‘These tactical-techniques exercises
are imprecise but they are certainly situated in a
game in action and in opposition’ (L’entraîneur
français, 189, July 1983).
Despite these advances, French teams had
suffered from a lack of titles in the 1970’s and,
according to the NTD, it hadn’t managed to
win because players lacked mental strength and
tactical skills (De Taddeo, 2003). Developing
them became a priority and the ongoing analysis of the major competitions continued to
direct reflections. That’s why a complete analysis of the Championship Euro 1988 was
made during the International Congress of
the same season for German coaches. They
noted, for example, that the best teams preferred zone marking to individual marking
because ‘the teams evolving in zones were
more comfortable moving naturally from
defence into attack’ (L’entraîneur français, 248,
August 1989).
The NTD informed French coaches of
these conclusions: they had to take ownership
of zone marking and refine it, even if some
French teams like FC Nantes were already using
it during training. Keeping an ongoing relationship with Germany7, the NTD managed to
obtain the report of the International Congress
33
1988 of German Federation in DuisbourgWeldau in June 1989. This was full of practical
applications: ‘the tactical behaviour training in
groups takes place only in the form of games:
numerical superiority against numerical inferiority (p.e. 3:1, 4:2), numerical equality against
numerical equality (p.e. 2:2, 3:3), numerical
inferiority against numerical superiority (p.e.
2:3, 3:4)’ (L’entraîneur français, 249, September
1989). These little games taught players to
deal with a changing balance of power during the match. The NTD wanted to relay these
directives to coaches of professional teams,
an initiative that emphasised ongoing mutual
exchanges of knowledges between expert
coaches (Day, 2013).
Under the NTD umbrella, more articles concerning tactical aspect, like ‘Guidance of tactical and technical training from the high level
teaching’, written by NTD Gerard Houiller
(L’entraîneur français, 270, October 1991) were
published in coaches’ professional reviews.
Based on research from exercise physiology,
Houiller presented solutions to becoming
more efficient in technical and tactical training
in the advice he offered to coaches. The article argued, for example, that efficient training
required: ‘a certain freshness to tackle technical-tactical work. That’s why you must focus the
game before the physical’.
For some decades, the final match had concluded the training sessions as a kind of relaxation moment but, subsequently, its status
evolved and it became the time when technicaltactic skills were applied in the nearest possible
conditions to competition. Since 1990, French
NTD has systematized this technical and tactical training as part of a system of integrated
training composed of 4 components: technical,
tactical, physical and psychological, although
this such approach was introduced in 1988
by Johann Cruyff in Spain as Garcia-Marti has
shown it in this volume.
7 For the president Mitterrand, Germany was at the core of his international political dimension. J.-J. Becker, avec la collaboration de
P. Ory. Crises et alternances. 1974-2000. Nouvelle histoire de la France contemporaine. Paris, Seuil, 2002. pp. 628-629.
© De Boeck Supérieur | Downloaded on 10/04/2022 from www.cairn-int.info (IP: 82.77.225.253)
Technical and Tactical Coaching in French Professional Football Teams Between 1942 and 1990
Laurent Grün
4. Conclusion
© De Boeck Supérieur | Downloaded on 10/04/2022 from www.cairn-int.info (IP: 82.77.225.253)
Coaching seems to have investigated tactical training before technical training and, up
to the 1990’s, coaches rehearsed technical skills
in a very directive way, using their former player
experience, without applying scientific knowledges. On the contrary, in their tactical training, Frantz and Arribas had used coaching since
the middle of 1960’s, as noted in the introduction and Frantz, in particular, relied on scientific knowledge to create the tactical training of
the team. The two coaches promoted dialogue
with players, appropriate to an interpersonal
exchange between partners but also with the
coach. Later, even if the approach remained
essentially empirical, the appeal of science
proved useful, as with Gerard Houillier in the
1990’s. On the other hand, the increasing
introduction of games in training and performances in matches also promoted interpersonal exchanges between players and coaches
with respect to tactical training, with coaches
delegating part of their power to players, who
then made their own decisions.
Sources
Archives personnelles de Georges Boulogne, Fédération
Française de Football.
Bulletin de l’Amicale des entraîneurs diplômés de la F.F.F.
(1947-1951)
Bulletin de l’Amicale des entraîneurs diplômés de la F.F.F., nouvelle série (1951-1954)
L’Entraîneur français au service du football (1954-1969, puis
1969-1990)
Bibliography
Becker, J.-J. (2002). Crises et alternances. 1974-2000.
Nouvelle histoire de la France contemporaine. Paris : Seuil.
présentée au Séminaire international « Le coaching sportif : perspectives historiques et culturelles »,
26 avril, Besançon, France.
De Taddéo, F. (2003). French soccer evolution in youth development. Communication présentée au Congrès international des entraîneurs de football, juin, Lisbonne,
Portugal.
Faure, J.-M. & Suaud, C. (1998). Le club comme objet de
croyance. Sociétés et représentations. Football et Sociétés,
7, 201-212.
Faure, J.-M. & Suaud, C. (1999). Le football professionnel à
la française. Paris : Presses universitaires de France.
Gréhaigne, J.-F. (1994). Vers une autre conception de
l’enseignement des sports collectifs. Dans Groupe
sports collectifs de l’académie de Dijon. Dossier EPS
n° 17. Didactique des sports collectifs à l’école. Paris :
Éditions Revue EP.S, 16-22.
Grün, L. (2010). L’entraînement des équipes de football de haut niveau en France : de 1890 à nos jours.
In T. Bauer & D. Gomet (dir.), Les cahiers de l’INSEP
n° 46. Histoire de la performance du sportif de haut
niveau (pp. 143-154). Paris : INSEP.
Grün, L. (2011). Entraîneur de football : histoire d’une profession de 1890 à nos jours. Thèse de doctorat en sciences du sport, Université Claude Bernard, Lyon 1.
Krüger, A. (2016). From Russia with Love? Sixty years of
Proliferation of L.P.Matveyev’s Concept of Periodisation?
Communication présentée au Séminaire international « Le coaching sportif : perspectives historiques et culturelles », 26 avril, Besançon, France.
Loudcher, J.-F. (2016). Entre Management, intervention
et entraînement ; le coaching, une notion clef dans le
champ des sciences du sport. Communication présentée au Séminaire international « Le coaching sportif : perspectives historiques et culturelles », 26 avril,
Besançon, France.
Mérand, R. (1952). Problème actuel dans la formation du
véritable entraîneur. Servir le basket, 2.
Mérand, R. (1959). Le basket-ball jeu simple, mais sport
compliqué. Éducation Physique et Sportive, 45, 41-43.
Saint-Martin, J. (1999). À propos des influences
étrangères. In J. Saint-Martin & T. Terret (dir.), Le
sport français dans l’entre-deux-guerres. Regards croisés sur les influences étrangères (pp. 317-322). Paris :
L’Harmattan.
Day, D. (2013). Historical perspectives on coaching. In
P. Potrac, W. Gilbert, & J. Denison (Eds.), Routledge
Hanbook of Sports Coaching (pp. 5-15). New York:
Routledge.
Terret, T. (2000). Les modèles d’entraînement en France
dans les années vingt : diversité, références scientifiques et pressions internationales. In J. Saint-Martin
& T. Terret (dir.), Le sport français dans l’entre-deuxguerres. Regards croisés sur les influences étrangères
(pp. 147-161). Paris : L’Harmattan.
Day, D. (2016). The Cultural Transmission of Sports Coaching:
Britain and America Before 1939. Communication
Wahl, A. (1989). Les archives du football. Sport et société en
France (1880-1980). Paris : Gallimard-Julliard.
© De Boeck Supérieur | Downloaded on 10/04/2022 from www.cairn-int.info (IP: 82.77.225.253)
34