- The Observer,
- Sunday October 15 2000
Winning the World Cup is not down to chance, it's the result of hard work, a will to follow a strong policy, a search for superior football. If somebody wants to copy our system they must start by developing the blueprint, developing the coaches, and developing the players. These are the essentials. Today my role involves supervising the education of tomorrow's coaches, then they form the players. This is what technical direction is. We are the only ones in Europe to do this and it was started by Gerard Houllier. He created a special diploma for youth coaches called formateurs. They number 80 to 100 and every year they come back to the Federation to learn more. It's an ongoing thing.
The main reason we won the World Cup is we had an exceptional generation of players and they are the fruits of a policy that was put together more than 30 years ago by the French Football Federation. We were very lucky to have had a group of people in charge who projected a great view of the future, knowing that if we wanted to be competitive we had to be organised.
Georges Boulogne [national coach from 1969-73] had the idea to create a national technical direction. At the time, French football wasn't bad but it wasn't great either. He put the structures in place, and developed a whole line of thinking, a philosophy. He recently died, and thank God he saw France become world champions.
He created what we call the formation , the development of young players - an enormous revolution. At the time, people didn't understand because the clubs were obliged to take it on and suddenly they had to find people to look after the kids and wondered what to do about school.
Today we have very well prepared new young players. We are under-18 world champions. With the growing influence of agents, huge contracts and star lifestyles, it is increasingly difficult to ensure the boys sustain a sporting attitude. But the beauty of our way of working is that even if you are a young star, if you don't have the will to work properly you are dismissed immediately without the possibility of returning. For me, football is a way of life. You have to be very professional: you can't just do it lightly.
Our help in this way doesn't stop once the players become professional. Imagine, for example, the potential for Patrick Vieira. I hope, if he continues his progression, in two years he will be the best player in Europe, or even the world. It's all in his head. If he keeps his ambition, enthusiasm, will power, he will do that. If he stops, he goes down. It's our role, and that's where we come in, to tell them to be very demanding of themselves.
At the heart of the French system is Clairfontaine, our base in a chateau outside Paris. It was a great decision to create a home for football, from the kids to the professionals. Clairfontaine helps to bring everyone together and unites the work and the philosophy of French football. It's a meeting place for the football family. Even the referees go there for a get-together every year. At the FFF, we put the collective ideal first. That was the hardest thing to put together. The French are well known for being individual, egotistical, Latin blooded. But football showed us victory is a collective effort.
The day will come when England have to kick start themselves, when they realise things can't carry on as they are. Maybe you need to change some views, as we did. The job was so enormous it took us more than 10 years to do it. It takes about eight to 10 years to bring a player to maturity in football.
I am not worried about England. It's a football country, the roots of football. I can't see why it couldn't quickly put together its own formula. It doesn't have to be like the French. One of our biggest mistakes was that we tried to copy what happened elsewhere. You have to take what's good for you but not an entire system.
But first of all you have to want to do it. Everyone in football's family has to agree in this. Even in France we still have to fight every day to keep developing. Howard Wilkinson - a good friend of Gerard Houllier - knows how it works in France. But he may put something together that is even better than our system.
Since I began to work here in 1992, we have benefited from what was done before. What we missed was to be winners. I arrived at a crossroads. The players coming through the system were well groomed, educated and - crucially - increasingly competitive. This is why in the Nineties we've improved, because French people are not naturally competitive.
Our football was already moving in the right direction but there was a major setback in 1993, the famous elimination from the World Cup when Bulgaria stopped us from qualifying in the last minute. It put a stop to everything. I was part of that mission and I thought it was finished for me. We had lost, the coach and main man, Gerard Houllier, stepped down, we were really disappointed. But it helped us in the end, that defeat. We could sit down, understand and go forward.
Sometimes you have to accept missing a big tournament to ensure a stronger long-term future. Sometimes you have to be more realistic. Your goals shouldn't be sky high straight away. In order to create the right dynamic between players and coaches you need to lower your immediate goals, to make sure everybody is working together. In our sport we need solidarity. You can't do it on your own.
People were sceptical when I took over, because I was part of the team that lost. We learned from our errors, the mistakes we made preparing the team, relating to the players, in the way people were living day to day in the French team. Rather than look at winning the World Cup straight away you have to learn the basics, and do the basics. That's what we did. We did it when the press was really against us, even not very honest at times, but we never changed our route.
People like Kevin Keegan, Franz Beckenbauer, all the greats, they are doubted all the time. But thank God for that, because it helps you to go forward. Doubts should be a positive not a negative thing. Positive doubts make us think about how to improve.
You need patience, but you know for a fact that when you are at a high level nobody is prepared to wait. The only people who were ready to be patient were people from the football world, who appreciated what I was doing. Nobody else believed in us, that we could do something massive. The fans and the media didn't understand, which is normal. What I needed, and got, was the support and means to do my job properly. I did exactly what I wanted to do. All we knew was that we shouldn't waste time - we had a main goal, which was the World Cup coming to France. We always remained focused but it was hard because we had Euro 96 before the World Cup.
First, I wanted to create a group dynamic to take to the European championship. I wanted to finish in the top four of Europe. We did that, and then we realised we had great players in the team. Seventeen of that team played in big European teams, but we had to make them play together and give them a style of play. That was really difficult between 1996 and 1998 because we didn't have any competitive games as World Cup hosts.
Strength, enthusiasm, conviction. These are the fundamental qualities a coach requires if he aims to win the World Cup. If you don't have these three things then you can't go beyond yourself, which is what you must do to win something big.
Last summer I had no frustrations watching the team win the European championship from the background. I was so happy that the players I put together achieved this amazing thing. It was wonderful. I lived the tournament much better than 98 because I was more of a fan, a friend, than the decision maker. Seeing the fruition of what I worked with since 1993 was an extreme satisfaction and happiness, probably more than if I was manager.
Now we have big responsibilities to prepare for tomorrow and we have new ideas - essential if we need to progress. It's easier to get to the top than to stay there. Motivation hasn't stopped because we want to keep our World Cup in 2002. You always need new goals. We never think about the past, we think about the future because football is constantly progressing. Think about African football, Asian football, it's formidable. If we think in Europe we are the best, we are not going to be the best forever. It's like us being world champions - if we believe that we'll stand still and we want to win it again.
Aimé Jacquet was talking to Amy Lawrence.
