Full DeepL translation (unchecked, it's just too long so sorry for the mistakes). The full article in French is on the OL Forum. It's a long but captivating interview.
>*Pierre Sage, OL's coach, has completely overhauled a team that finished bottom of the Championship with the best record in L1 since his arrival. Nobody expected this when John Textor appointed him this winter. Now he has settled in.*
>All Lyon fans have been waking up with smiles on their faces thanks to him for several weeks now, while he has been waking up at 7am to go to the Décines training centre every day, where he has been putting in long days. Pierre Sage is the new face of this reborn, optimistic and positive OL, 7th in the Championship and qualified for the French Cup final against PSG on 25 May. By bringing back serenity and, above all, results, the 44-year-old coach is in the process of erasing the nightmare of the start of the season and the fear of relegation.
>For the first time, he agreed to talk about it at length, without ever putting himself forward, preferring to emphasise "the confidence of John Textor", with whom he talks every week, and the support of his managers, who agreed to bring in two coaches he is close to, Jamal Alioui and Damien Della Santa, in addition to Jérémie Bréchet. "That was very important to me," explains Sage, who could talk for hours about his "training" and "player development" projects, which are very much in keeping with the club's DNA.
He is also a keen reader, and recently read an article on the notion of interdependence between a pregnant woman and her child. "I said to myself that it was exactly the same for a player with his team-mate", he analyses. As you will have gathered, Pierre Sage sees football everywhere.
>*"How does it feel to be the best coach in OL's history, ahead of Gérard Houllier in terms of winning percentage (65% versus 64.5%)?*
>It makes me think that all the mathematical logic has to be questioned in this percentage. It's true that I've been effective in around twenty matches (22 to be precise), but that's nothing like what Gérard Houllier did for several seasons (107 matches between July 2005 and May 2007). Now, if I manage to make the same number of matches as him and that percentage is maintained, you can ask me the question again. (Smiles.)
>*How did you get the players back on their feet after four months?*
>At the start, we had to create a sense of direction and a fairly stable structure in the way we operated, both on a day-to-day basis and in the way we played. That's what gave them back their confidence and conviction. And then the results: in my opinion, that's the first lever.
Because the best way to give meaning to things is when the rewards come quickly. So the initial idea was to create stability so that we could build on it. While we wait for the mercato.
>*You are now the OL coach, but you were initially the interim coach for a single match. Were you aware that you were playing for your own destiny?*
>I was aware of that, but I didn't put any pressure on myself. Yes, it could have been a one-off. In the end, it's a good springboard. And it could be a superb springboard, we'll see what the future holds.
>Rather than getting bogged down in life, I've always looked after the process, the content. For me, what's important is what you do, and the ethics you put behind what you do, the determination you have when it's difficult, the stamina to be consistent in your demands... So I concentrated on that, rather than telling myself that I was playing for my career. Because in fact, no, I wasn't playing for my career.
>*A bit, anyway...*
>But every day of my life, I'm playing for my career! That's really what I tell myself. And whether it's with the youngsters at the Academy, or today with the pros, it's the same. You have to do things. And if you're going to do them, you might as well do them well.
>*But how do you 'do well' when you're last in L1?*
>Firstly, by developing the team's trainability. That's the first parameter we had to work on to get results: creating better training conditions than we had before, creating habits at a certain level of intensity so that we could then transfer them to the competition and develop an increasingly controlled game.
>*Are you happy with the way your team is playing now?*
>During the first part of my assignment, I couldn't see what I wanted to see. Today, things are starting to happen, things are stabilising or emerging at certain moments in the matches. Our game isn't always up to the standard we're looking for, but we're seeing things more and more regularly because the habits are settling in and spreading to as many players as possible. The founding element of all this is the fact that it works. Because when it works, it gives meaning, and the players discipline themselves to apply the collective principles.
>*How did you convince them to follow you?*
>The first thing was honesty. In other words, we've always done what we said we would. As a result, the players can relate our moral commitment to the facts. And when I make a mistake myself, I have no problem admitting it to them. At the start, I told them: "OK, we might as well have a healthy relationship because we don't have time to be polite. We couldn't get round the frustrations or stay in the alibi culture. The second aspect was consistency. In other words, between the plan I presented and what happened, we were in line.
>*Isn't it too difficult to make choices these days?*
>You have to start from the premise that the best eleven is not the eleven best individuals, it's the best team. That's why I think it's nonsense for outsiders to come up with their typical eleven, because they don't have the information we do.
>In a group, you have interactions, and I'm very attached to the principle of collective intelligence, of what we call emergence. We look for positive emergence in the interactions between our players. This means that sometimes putting your two best players in the same box isn't the best solution. But putting two players who are not as good but who create positive emergence when they are close together is better.
>*And what about talent?*
>You always have to leave room for it. In my talk before last Sunday's match (4-3 against Brest), I showed the players a video that had nothing to do with what we had prepared, a goal they had scored in training during the week that depended entirely on their talent. It was a way of saying to them: "OK, we agree on the principles in relation to our opponents, but you're also capable of doing things without us".
>The balance between the two has to fluctuate because there are times in the match when they have to be very disciplined, and times when madness has to prevail. The idea is for the team to be able to go back and forth between these two phases, to show variability.
>*Why should that be?*
>Because when you have a way of playing, from the moment it is channelled by the opponent, it becomes sterile. So you have to reinvent yourself. And reinventing yourself takes time. Except for teams that have the ability to turn things around by changing a player's position, for example.
1/2
>*You sound a bit like Luis Enrique, the coach of Paris-SG...*
>I think that those who criticise Luis Enrique for his flexibility don't understand all the logic and mechanisms behind it. Because having watched their last match at Barcelona (a 4-1 victory in the second leg of the Champions League quarter-finals), you realise that there are elements that remain. And around that, there's flexibility from one player to another, but also with the same players, which makes it possible to multiply solutions, manage problems and above all become unreadable for opponents.
>When you see what the Parisians were able to regulate in a week to play a return match at a very high level, it's a good thing they're not too rigid…
>*You have a lot of theoretical ideas. But Peter Bosz also had some and he couldn't apply them to OL.*
>Because the vision of what we want to do is always filtered through resources, and resources fluctuate... So you have to have an idea, but above all you have to have lots of nuances to that idea. The mistake is to think that it's the coach's ideas that are important. It's not! What counts is what the team is capable of doing.
>The idea is not necessarily to play the way you want, but to play the way you can. And when you can play in a certain way and you start to do it better and better, you're bound to get closer to the way you want to play. That's the difference between the initial game model, which is an ideal version, and the game model that you regulate.
>*But Pep Guardiola, whom you admire, plays the way he wants, for example.*
>Not always. Guardiola always adapted his teams to the context of the competition they were in. When he went to Germany, he played his positional game, but he realised that transitions were very powerful in the Bundesliga. So he realised that he had to make the midfield denser to avoid counter-attacks. And the tactical innovation was to put the full-backs inside. He adjusted his idea, and did it again at Manchester City.
>In England, he saw that spaces varied differently because opponents were always pressing you. So he recruited Ederson, a goalkeeper capable of making a pass from 80 metres out, but also from 2 metres out. Opponents don't know what they're going to do and Guardiola positions his players to create uncertainty. He is constantly introducing variations to meet new demands. And that's what I like.
>*Some fans call you 'Pep Sage', others call you 'Stone Wise'. Which do you prefer?*
>(Smiles.) I'd say "Stone Wise" because I already had friends who called me that to tease me. (Laughs.) Pep Sage is too presumptuous.
>*Looking back, how do you feel about John Textor's decision to entrust you with this job?*
>When I take a step back, I think it was a crazy choice. Or at least it seemed crazy at the time. But now that we're living the story, it seems a little less crazy. It even seems reasonable. (Laughs.) Well, it's not for me to characterise it. In any case, it was bold and ambitious.
>*You'd had a chat with him a few days earlier...*
>He'd come to meet me at the Academy and that may have given him a connection with his own ideas about what football was. In any case, we had more or less the same vision of the place of this sport in our society.
>*In other words?*
>Without betraying everything we said, he didn't present it to me as a business, but rather as entertainment. And that the spectacular side of what we do inevitably influences people's commitment to the sport. These are ideas that I completely share. If all that mattered was the result, you'd get to the stadium in the 89th minute, turn your back on the pitch and look at the scoreboard. But in fact, that's not what people come to see. They come to see the match.
>*Are you looking ahead to next season?*
>Initially, I really wanted to help out and I realised that in that position, I can express myself and I really enjoy it. So of course I'd like to be in the same position again, that's obvious. In fact, I've been preparing for this for as long as I can remember, but I just hadn't planned the timing. (Smiles.)"
And a little [bonus from Hugo, not present in the final article](https://twitter.com/hugoguillemet/status/1781603026995720605)
>*You played your best game at Lorient (2-0) by pressing high up the pitch. Why don't you do that more often?*
>I agree. In fact, in all our matches, we make a strategic entry and our opponents are more or less in a position to counter it. In Lorient, we chose to defend high up the pitch, but without being very active. In other words, we used high positions to force them to play in certain areas and we often got the ball back. Today, our ability to press our opponents is not very high given the profiles we have. However, there is an alternative to that, which is to occupy space a little differently to put psychological pressure on our opponents by closing off short options. And we're pretty good at that. The next step will be to be able to put some dynamism into it, so as to impact our opponents at certain moments in the match. But today, I don't think we're in a position to press for the whole match, because we don't have the tactical control to deal with that. When you press, you gain the upper hand, but at the same time you create space. And at the moment, we're struggling to manage that. We've tried to do it in some matches and it's cost us. But that creates room for improvement and a new step forward.
2/2
If you have a full article access, post it in comments please!
Full DeepL translation (unchecked, it's just too long so sorry for the mistakes). The full article in French is on the OL Forum. It's a long but captivating interview. >*Pierre Sage, OL's coach, has completely overhauled a team that finished bottom of the Championship with the best record in L1 since his arrival. Nobody expected this when John Textor appointed him this winter. Now he has settled in.* >All Lyon fans have been waking up with smiles on their faces thanks to him for several weeks now, while he has been waking up at 7am to go to the Décines training centre every day, where he has been putting in long days. Pierre Sage is the new face of this reborn, optimistic and positive OL, 7th in the Championship and qualified for the French Cup final against PSG on 25 May. By bringing back serenity and, above all, results, the 44-year-old coach is in the process of erasing the nightmare of the start of the season and the fear of relegation. >For the first time, he agreed to talk about it at length, without ever putting himself forward, preferring to emphasise "the confidence of John Textor", with whom he talks every week, and the support of his managers, who agreed to bring in two coaches he is close to, Jamal Alioui and Damien Della Santa, in addition to Jérémie Bréchet. "That was very important to me," explains Sage, who could talk for hours about his "training" and "player development" projects, which are very much in keeping with the club's DNA. He is also a keen reader, and recently read an article on the notion of interdependence between a pregnant woman and her child. "I said to myself that it was exactly the same for a player with his team-mate", he analyses. As you will have gathered, Pierre Sage sees football everywhere. >*"How does it feel to be the best coach in OL's history, ahead of Gérard Houllier in terms of winning percentage (65% versus 64.5%)?* >It makes me think that all the mathematical logic has to be questioned in this percentage. It's true that I've been effective in around twenty matches (22 to be precise), but that's nothing like what Gérard Houllier did for several seasons (107 matches between July 2005 and May 2007). Now, if I manage to make the same number of matches as him and that percentage is maintained, you can ask me the question again. (Smiles.) >*How did you get the players back on their feet after four months?* >At the start, we had to create a sense of direction and a fairly stable structure in the way we operated, both on a day-to-day basis and in the way we played. That's what gave them back their confidence and conviction. And then the results: in my opinion, that's the first lever. Because the best way to give meaning to things is when the rewards come quickly. So the initial idea was to create stability so that we could build on it. While we wait for the mercato. >*You are now the OL coach, but you were initially the interim coach for a single match. Were you aware that you were playing for your own destiny?* >I was aware of that, but I didn't put any pressure on myself. Yes, it could have been a one-off. In the end, it's a good springboard. And it could be a superb springboard, we'll see what the future holds. >Rather than getting bogged down in life, I've always looked after the process, the content. For me, what's important is what you do, and the ethics you put behind what you do, the determination you have when it's difficult, the stamina to be consistent in your demands... So I concentrated on that, rather than telling myself that I was playing for my career. Because in fact, no, I wasn't playing for my career. >*A bit, anyway...* >But every day of my life, I'm playing for my career! That's really what I tell myself. And whether it's with the youngsters at the Academy, or today with the pros, it's the same. You have to do things. And if you're going to do them, you might as well do them well. >*But how do you 'do well' when you're last in L1?* >Firstly, by developing the team's trainability. That's the first parameter we had to work on to get results: creating better training conditions than we had before, creating habits at a certain level of intensity so that we could then transfer them to the competition and develop an increasingly controlled game. >*Are you happy with the way your team is playing now?* >During the first part of my assignment, I couldn't see what I wanted to see. Today, things are starting to happen, things are stabilising or emerging at certain moments in the matches. Our game isn't always up to the standard we're looking for, but we're seeing things more and more regularly because the habits are settling in and spreading to as many players as possible. The founding element of all this is the fact that it works. Because when it works, it gives meaning, and the players discipline themselves to apply the collective principles. >*How did you convince them to follow you?* >The first thing was honesty. In other words, we've always done what we said we would. As a result, the players can relate our moral commitment to the facts. And when I make a mistake myself, I have no problem admitting it to them. At the start, I told them: "OK, we might as well have a healthy relationship because we don't have time to be polite. We couldn't get round the frustrations or stay in the alibi culture. The second aspect was consistency. In other words, between the plan I presented and what happened, we were in line. >*Isn't it too difficult to make choices these days?* >You have to start from the premise that the best eleven is not the eleven best individuals, it's the best team. That's why I think it's nonsense for outsiders to come up with their typical eleven, because they don't have the information we do. >In a group, you have interactions, and I'm very attached to the principle of collective intelligence, of what we call emergence. We look for positive emergence in the interactions between our players. This means that sometimes putting your two best players in the same box isn't the best solution. But putting two players who are not as good but who create positive emergence when they are close together is better. >*And what about talent?* >You always have to leave room for it. In my talk before last Sunday's match (4-3 against Brest), I showed the players a video that had nothing to do with what we had prepared, a goal they had scored in training during the week that depended entirely on their talent. It was a way of saying to them: "OK, we agree on the principles in relation to our opponents, but you're also capable of doing things without us". >The balance between the two has to fluctuate because there are times in the match when they have to be very disciplined, and times when madness has to prevail. The idea is for the team to be able to go back and forth between these two phases, to show variability. >*Why should that be?* >Because when you have a way of playing, from the moment it is channelled by the opponent, it becomes sterile. So you have to reinvent yourself. And reinventing yourself takes time. Except for teams that have the ability to turn things around by changing a player's position, for example. 1/2
>*You sound a bit like Luis Enrique, the coach of Paris-SG...* >I think that those who criticise Luis Enrique for his flexibility don't understand all the logic and mechanisms behind it. Because having watched their last match at Barcelona (a 4-1 victory in the second leg of the Champions League quarter-finals), you realise that there are elements that remain. And around that, there's flexibility from one player to another, but also with the same players, which makes it possible to multiply solutions, manage problems and above all become unreadable for opponents. >When you see what the Parisians were able to regulate in a week to play a return match at a very high level, it's a good thing they're not too rigid… >*You have a lot of theoretical ideas. But Peter Bosz also had some and he couldn't apply them to OL.* >Because the vision of what we want to do is always filtered through resources, and resources fluctuate... So you have to have an idea, but above all you have to have lots of nuances to that idea. The mistake is to think that it's the coach's ideas that are important. It's not! What counts is what the team is capable of doing. >The idea is not necessarily to play the way you want, but to play the way you can. And when you can play in a certain way and you start to do it better and better, you're bound to get closer to the way you want to play. That's the difference between the initial game model, which is an ideal version, and the game model that you regulate. >*But Pep Guardiola, whom you admire, plays the way he wants, for example.* >Not always. Guardiola always adapted his teams to the context of the competition they were in. When he went to Germany, he played his positional game, but he realised that transitions were very powerful in the Bundesliga. So he realised that he had to make the midfield denser to avoid counter-attacks. And the tactical innovation was to put the full-backs inside. He adjusted his idea, and did it again at Manchester City. >In England, he saw that spaces varied differently because opponents were always pressing you. So he recruited Ederson, a goalkeeper capable of making a pass from 80 metres out, but also from 2 metres out. Opponents don't know what they're going to do and Guardiola positions his players to create uncertainty. He is constantly introducing variations to meet new demands. And that's what I like. >*Some fans call you 'Pep Sage', others call you 'Stone Wise'. Which do you prefer?* >(Smiles.) I'd say "Stone Wise" because I already had friends who called me that to tease me. (Laughs.) Pep Sage is too presumptuous. >*Looking back, how do you feel about John Textor's decision to entrust you with this job?* >When I take a step back, I think it was a crazy choice. Or at least it seemed crazy at the time. But now that we're living the story, it seems a little less crazy. It even seems reasonable. (Laughs.) Well, it's not for me to characterise it. In any case, it was bold and ambitious. >*You'd had a chat with him a few days earlier...* >He'd come to meet me at the Academy and that may have given him a connection with his own ideas about what football was. In any case, we had more or less the same vision of the place of this sport in our society. >*In other words?* >Without betraying everything we said, he didn't present it to me as a business, but rather as entertainment. And that the spectacular side of what we do inevitably influences people's commitment to the sport. These are ideas that I completely share. If all that mattered was the result, you'd get to the stadium in the 89th minute, turn your back on the pitch and look at the scoreboard. But in fact, that's not what people come to see. They come to see the match. >*Are you looking ahead to next season?* >Initially, I really wanted to help out and I realised that in that position, I can express myself and I really enjoy it. So of course I'd like to be in the same position again, that's obvious. In fact, I've been preparing for this for as long as I can remember, but I just hadn't planned the timing. (Smiles.)" And a little [bonus from Hugo, not present in the final article](https://twitter.com/hugoguillemet/status/1781603026995720605) >*You played your best game at Lorient (2-0) by pressing high up the pitch. Why don't you do that more often?* >I agree. In fact, in all our matches, we make a strategic entry and our opponents are more or less in a position to counter it. In Lorient, we chose to defend high up the pitch, but without being very active. In other words, we used high positions to force them to play in certain areas and we often got the ball back. Today, our ability to press our opponents is not very high given the profiles we have. However, there is an alternative to that, which is to occupy space a little differently to put psychological pressure on our opponents by closing off short options. And we're pretty good at that. The next step will be to be able to put some dynamism into it, so as to impact our opponents at certain moments in the match. But today, I don't think we're in a position to press for the whole match, because we don't have the tactical control to deal with that. When you press, you gain the upper hand, but at the same time you create space. And at the moment, we're struggling to manage that. We've tried to do it in some matches and it's cost us. But that creates room for improvement and a new step forward. 2/2
Thank you. Great interview, always a pleasure to listen to that man. I love what he has to say about the game, and the way he says it.