“What separates you from Thomas Tuchel, or a Mauricio Pochettino, to be able to manage Paris Saint-Germain, for example?”
Eleven months after that question was posed — at a time when Christophe Galtier had just confirmed that he was stepping down as Lille coach two days after leading them to the 2020-21 Ligue 1 title, denying runners-up PSG a fourth straight championship and eighth in nine years — the Frenchman’s response is worth revisiting.
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“Because I am French, no?” Galtier said to the country’s top daily sports newspaper L’Equipe.
“At its core I say that, but I don’t know. Thomas had very good results in Germany. Pochettino had a very good spell with Southampton and Tottenham. I like them both.
“I think PSG prefer to have a foreign manager because this team, the club, and its atmosphere has an international dimension and they need an international manager — just like Monaco, who work in an international environment with foreign managers. Which I understand very well. I don’t have a problem with that. I am not saying that it is a handicap to be French.”
Things can change quickly in football.
Galtier was confirmed as PSG’s new head coach today, replacing Pochettino in a development that would have been unthinkable a couple of months ago, let alone last summer, and signalling what is being described within the Paris club as the start of a new era.
“We don’t want flashy-bling-bling anymore, it’s the end of the glitter,” PSG president Nasser Al-Khelaifi told French daily paper Le Parisien last month, sounding like a man who was preparing to trade in a fleet of Bentleys for some Volvo estates. “We have to create a real team, find a real collective spirit. That will be the mission of the new coach.”
Galtier, who finished fifth in Ligue 1 with Nice last season, 20 points behind title-winners PSG but 11 ahead of defending champions Lille, arrives at the Parc des Princes without any of the stardust Zinedine Zidane would have brought to the job (the French football icon and former Real Madrid manager was the fans’ favourite to take over).
But what he does have is a track record of galvanising teams, dramatically improving results — both Lille and previous employers Saint-Etienne went from fighting relegation to winning silverware under his watch — and extracting every ounce of ability from his players.
In short, the 55-year-old is a highly respected figure in French football — someone who is seen as a talented coach, emotionally intelligent and capable of producing tactically disciplined teams who consistently punch above their weight.
“You can be lucky once, but not so many times,” says a senior figure at Lyon, who had been keen to appoint Galtier last summer before he chose to go further south still and join Nice.
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We are talking, however, about PSG, a club who have developed a reputation for being almost impossible to manage, where success is defined by what happens in the spring on Champions League knockout nights, and where there has long been a perception that the power is in the hands of certain players rather than the coach ostensibly in charge of them.
For Galtier, it will be a huge test, albeit one those close to him expect him to embrace.
“He will consider lots of parameters, like the history of the club, the fans and the academy,” Jordan Galtier, Christophe’s son who is the assistant at Ligue 1 club Ajaccio and a former professional footballer, tells The Athletic when asked about his father’s approach to the job.
“His biggest challenge will be to create a feeling of belonging to the club and the shirt. If the fans identify with the players, then they (PSG) can be strong.”
That feeling of belonging has been lost for some time at PSG, fuelling talk of the need for a change in identity as well as a shift in mentality. After outlining his frustrations about last season, in particular a lack of effort and a sense that some players have been taking advantage of the club, Al-Khelaifi said that his “goal for the next few years is to have only Parisien players in our team”.
How much substance there is behind that sort of rhetoric, or the “end of the glitter” line for that matter, remains to be seen, bearing in mind that PSG’s squad still reads like a who’s who of world football and, realistically, will do for some time to come.
What we can say for sure is that the decision to appoint Galtier represents a change in approach from the profile of the last three PSG coaches — Unai Emery (2016-18), Tuchel (summer 2018 to December 2020) and Pochettino — and the broader strategy since Qatar Sports Investments bought the club in summer 2011.
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“I’m not surprised,” Jose Fonte, Galtier’s title-winning captain at Lille, tells The Athletic when asked about Pochettino’s successor. “Let’s be honest, they’ve tried every (type of) manager that you could possibly imagine. For some reason, it hasn’t worked out. So why not give the man a chance? Why not a French coach that knows the league very well, that has proven that he’s a quality manager as well?
“Also, having Luis Campos is a big factor, I think. Both are great professionals — the best of the best in the business — so it’s going to be interesting to see. But I believe in them. I believe they can do the job.”
Campos, former sporting director at Monaco — building the team that won the 2016-17 Ligue 1 title — and Lille, is behind Galtier’s arrival at PSG and, in the eyes of Fonte and others, is also the reason why the appointment could work.
The 57-year-old, who was employed by Portuguese countryman Jose Mourinho as a scout at Real Madrid in 2012, took a role as PSG’s football adviser last month. There is a mutual respect — not to be confused with friendship — between him and Galtier, after they worked closely together at Lille for three years from 2017.
“Things are changing a lot at PSG, but one of the big changes is to have Campos on his (Galtier’s) staff — that is really important,” Jorge Maciel, who left Benfica’s academy in 2019 to be Galtier’s assistant at Lille, tells The Athletic. “I think both together will be stronger than all the other coaches before.
“They are on the same wavelength, they know what one can expect from the other, they know the weakness of PSG and they will anticipate the problems.”
Neymar, Lionel Messi and Kylian Mbappe.
“I wonder if he’ll manage them differently to how he managed Gary O’Neil at Portsmouth,” O’Neil says, laughing.
O’Neil was playing for Portsmouth in April 2005 when Galtier came to the club as assistant to new manager Alain Perrin. Although Perrin’s spell at Fratton Park was a disaster — he lasted only seven months and won just four of his 20 Premier League matches — the staff and players from that time speak fondly of Galtier.
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“We had a difficult run of results during Alain Perrin’s spell, but I do think you could see a knowledge and intelligence about Christophe,” O’Neil, who is now a first-team coach at Premier League-bound Bournemouth, explains to The Athletic.
“He did a lot with me individually. I was at a stage in my career when I was young and still trying to improve. He was quite hard on me, but whenever we got past that and we had a good chat, it was because he felt I was important to them and that they needed to get as much out of me as they could. So it was always coming from a place of care.
“Christophe had a steeliness about him — he definitely wasn’t a pushover. But obviously, at that stage, you’ve got no idea that one day he’s going to manage a club as big as PSG.”
By the sound of things, Galtier had no idea back then that he was going to be a manager full stop, let alone end up in charge of a club whose goal is to be the biggest in the sport. “After 10 years being an assistant, the opportunity of being a manager came,” Jordan, his son, explains. “If his first coach, Alain Perrin, didn’t say to him, ‘Christophe, it’s your turn’, he would never have taken it.”
Galtier took over when Perrin was sacked by Saint-Etienne in December 2009 and quickly dispelled the myth that assistants don’t make good managers. After keeping Saint-Etienne up that first season, he led them to seven successive top-half finishes as well as their first trophy in 32 years, when they won the 2012-13 League Cup — an achievement that saw him share France’s manager of the year award with Carlo Ancelotti, who took PSG to their first title since the 1990s and the quarter-final of the Champions League and both domestic cups that season.
On the pitch, Galtier’s Saint-Etienne were solid rather than spectacular; methodical and defensive but effective at getting results. Off it, they were a selling club — Pierre-Emerick Aubameyang, Dimitri Payet and Blaise Matuidi were among those to move on. Galtier stayed for almost eight years — he was the longest-serving manager in Ligue 1 — before deciding in 2016-17 that the journey had come to a natural end.
Lille, where Galtier had spent three years as a player in the late 1990s, were in a mess at the end of 2017.
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Summer appointment Marcelo Bielsa had just departed having been suspended by the club 13 league games into his reign, they had financial problems and were third-bottom of Ligue 1 when the new coach arrived during the winter break. Galtier, however, was not discouraged. He talked with Campos at length and liked what he heard. Campos would focus on recruitment, leaving Galtier, who felt that he got “lost” signing players at Saint-Etienne, to put all his energy into what he enjoys even more than playing: managing and coaching.
After narrowly staying up that season, Lille’s results were outstanding.
They finished second and fourth in Galtier’s first two full years in charge and then, remarkably, won the title in his third.
PSG striker Mbappe painted that as a failure on their part more than a victory for Lille, which is true to an extent but also overlooks how Galtier and his players over-performed, from the influence of the evergreen Fonte, 37, and a 35-year-old Burak Yilmaz at either end of the pitch to a rejuvenated Renato Sanches in between.
It was an eclectic mix of young and old that worked spectacularly. “The art of the coach is to create with the ingredients — the players — that he has,” Maciel, Lille’s assistant coach, adds with a smile. “Christophe is cooking really good food.”
Although Galtier turned the attention away from himself in the wake of that title triumph and praised Campos, who had departed midway through that season, for being “the architect of this team”, the Lille players knew their coach was the glue holding everything together.
“You wouldn’t believe the amount of problems we had to deal with that season, the amount of things that happened that season,” Fonte says.
“We had problems between players, we had fights between players, we had fights between players and coaches, we had a change of chairman mid-season, COVID hit us. But Christophe was able to navigate through all of that. He showed great lucidity and clarity in choosing the path, and we all went behind him. That shows leadership.”
By Galtier’s own admission, he is not following in the footsteps of Pep Guardiola when it comes to his coaching. He describes himself as a pragmatist rather than a chess player.
“He likes organised teams,” Jordan Galtier says when asked to define his father’s philosophy. “I mean, organised with the ball and without the ball. Since he worked in LOSC (Lille), his priority and his process is how to break the first line.
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“In my opinion, he has, in his LOSC years and the beginning of Nice’s (last) season, variety in this domain. I also think he is a little underestimated in this area in France. He is seen as a defensive coach, but I really don’t agree with that. It’s true that he’s not in Pep’s philosophy — who can claim to be? — but he’d rather have the ball than leave it to the opponent.”
Tactical organisation has long been a cornerstone of Galtier’s approach to management. A hands-on coach, he is meticulous about individuals knowing their roles for every scenario that can come up in a game and has favoured a 4-4-2 formation at each of his last two clubs, never wavering from that system in his only season with Nice.
“Everybody talks about 4-4-2 (with Galtier),” Maciel adds. “It’s true, when the team is in defensive organisation, it defends 4-4-2. It’s really clear: two lines of four, two strikers working the first line of pressure, working as a block, the team really compact. But with the ball, it’s not the same approach. It’s fluid.”
Although that base 4-4-2 system seems certain to change at PSG, it is difficult to imagine Galtier moving away from his core principles, which require everyone to buy into a holistic approach. “He has this great quality of making attackers realise how important they are for defensive work,” Dante, Nice’s hugely experienced Brazilian centre-back and captain, said last season.
Galtier’s powers of persuasion in that area will be severely tested in his new job, though.
France great and TV pundit Thierry Henry said in November that PSG cannot hope to win the Champions League as long as they defend with only seven players – a point The Athletic’s Michael Cox also made when he highlighted their 7-0-3 formation out of possession from that month’s 2-1 away loss to Manchester City in the group stage.
Henry also questioned the extent to which then-coach Pochettino could change certain personnel during matches.
So why should we expect it to be any different under Galtier?
“Burak Yilmaz, Renato Sanches… they are really nice guys, but people with a big character,” replies Maciel, when asked how he thinks Galtier will deal with PSG’s superstars. “But it was really easy for Galtier to manage them because he’s an honest guy. The way he communicates with the players: one month before he would say to the guys, ‘I think you will play this much and this much’, so he prepares things in anticipation and is really clever in how he can pass the message.
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“For him, it will be a big experience, for sure, because we are talking about people with big status and power in the locker room — people that have more power sometimes than the coaches in the national team and in the clubs – but Galtier knows this and he has the social skills.”
Fonte has another solution – and one that arguably would not have existed when Leonardo, who recently departed as PSG’s sporting director, was around.
“I think having Luis Campos takes a lot of pressure off the coach because Luis Campos is a person that takes no… how do we say it without swearing? He takes no BS (bullshit) off no one. He deals with the problems,” Fonte says.
“Having said that, Christophe is very good with the relationship with the players. But, as you said, it’s big players, big egos, it’s the reality and we can’t run away from that. It’s never easy, but if anyone can deal with that and be successful, I think Christophe and Luis Campos will be perfect for that.”
In an interview with TV network Eurosport last season, Galtier spoke about his man-management style and the importance he attaches to being fair and open. “A dressing room needs justice and transparency,” he said. “When we are as transparent as possible, relationships are as simple as possible. I don’t say everything, but I don’t lie.”
Interestingly, Galtier quickly saw value in building bridges with the media, rather than keeping them at a distance, and is viewed in France as an excellent communicator with an infectious personality.
One French football writer describes him as having a “huge force of seduction and charm”, a quote that prompts laughter from Galtier’s son, Jordan.
Maciel tells stories about two-hour lunches at Lille after training, where Galtier would spend extended time with people outside of his inner circle and encourage everybody to speak. “He has this talent for forming relations,” Maciel adds. “Not just with the players and his staff, but with all the employees — he’s very intelligent like that.”
Now that he is no longer separated from Tuchel and Pochettino, Galtier will need to be smarter than ever.
(Top photo: Kenzo Tribouillard/AFP via Getty Images)