In football, and even more so within our Racing, happiness cannot be a permanent state. While the Lens supporters were on cloud nine after the victory in the Coupe de France, a myriad of declarations from Pierre Sage, each more contradictory and confusing than the next, threw a cold spell over Lens in the middle of a heatwave. They remind us that happiness is fragile. And that no season will be easy for Racing, starting with the next one.
Photo CSO
The incoherent remarks of Pierre Sage
If we discovered one thing with Pierre Sage, it was his simplicity. Simplicity which undoubtedly prevents him from being surrounded by a communications advisor. For once and, against all odds, we can only advise him to surround himself with a professional specialist. Otherwise, refraining from making more than risky declarations would be a lesser evil. Initially evasive at the end of the final by mentioning contacts at the microphones of BeIn Sports, he ended up being clearer on Sunday morning at Téléfoot affirming without a shadow of a doubt that he would still be Racing coach next season. Before backtracking again on RMC indicating that questions were being asked. The one who boasted of never lying to journalists was caught red-handed.
What is he looking for? A bench in the Premier League? We can easily understand that this is the dream of his life. He never hid it. Is he afraid of not being able to do better? It’s a shame then to refuse to know the anthem of the Champions League in Bollaert. Or does he negotiate a new salary and additional resources? If this is the case, whoever said he had assimilated the philosophy of the club and the Region did not understand that Lens only won when he played for Lens. A club of earthlings, with its means, which refuses to live on credit or on the hypothesis of a new qualification in the Champions League. You just had to listen to Jean-Louis Leca or Benjamin Parrot to understand it.
Photo CSO
This damn Rennes Racing Club
And then, when it’s not the Racing coach who goes off the rails, it’s his captain who leaves to join the Racing Club de Rennes. Thank you captain, good luck to you. But be careful, Adrien Thomasson is not going to Brittany for the money. No no, he is leaving for the Rennes project which he considers “ambitious”. What ambition is he talking about exactly? That of recreating an ersatz Lensois spirit by blithely overpaying players as they begin to decline? He probably also leaves for the pleasure of meeting the coach who put him on the bench and will not have trusted him in Racing for long. Doubling or tripling his salary, reducing his playing time by two or three, Thomasson risks being, in salary/minute played ratio, very well paid next season.
And as long as François Pinault assumes his role as Liliane Bettencourt of football, we will not blame our now former captain for growing fat on the back of one of the world’s biggest fortunes. But all the same, couldn’t we do without all these hypocrisies and these ready-made phrases when we all know that they are chasing money?
The need to “do Lens”
We are therefore not impatient to read the declarations of the other players who will have turned their backs on a Champions League with Racing for these unstructured mid-table clubs which only have the advantage of overpaying their players.
The club built a storytelling for months until the Coupe de France title. A storytelling around a workforce and a staff who have values other than those of money. The captain and his coach attacked him the day after the victory on May 22. Doing Lens means engaging with the means made available. This is not starting a blackmail game with its leaders and raising the stakes. Coal mining does not mean giving in to the sirens of money. Pierre Sage to tell us if he still fits into the club’s vision. If this is the case, he will have cruelly lacked discernment and an opportunity to remain silent. As long as he is not sure of his choice, we especially hope not to hear from him again. Malang Sarr and Allan Saint-Maximin also tell us if they are still part of the history of the club which allowed them, is it necessary to (re)specify it, to relaunch their sometimes fledgling careers.
Racing stuck in a Greek tragedy
For Jean-Louis Leca and all those who will remain, like every season, we will have to fight. There will never be anything simple in a sport where money is king and makes many of its players lose their minds. Racing is stuck in the tragedy of the myth of Sisyphus. Every year since the comeback in 2020, its managers and players have had to push their stone to the heights of Ligue 1. Every offseason, the best players and staff members leave to earn more money elsewhere. And the stone carried by the Lensois players and leaders ends up falling back to the bottom of the slag heap. Inexorably.
The leaders of Racing have demonstrated for years the quality of their work and yet are constantly forced to do even better to stay at the heights of Ligue 1. A constant battle. We know Racing too well to have learned, sometimes to our cost, that happiness was forever temporary and that the need to fight was permanent.
What the myth of Sisyphus teaches us is that faced with the absurdity of seeing a coach consider not supporting the club he himself qualified in the Champions League – and faced with the absurdity of football in general and the few trophies that Racing wins – we must imagine ourselves happy to be Lensois. Difficult to imagine, right?
