Meet the Manager – Henri Michel

The much travelled French man has come a long way since he first set his feet on a football pitch. He boasts of a playing career as a midfielder with Aix, and then Nantes where he spent 16 seasons and won three French titles and a French cup. He also represented his country 58 times scoring four goals.

He quit playing in 1982 and was appointed coach of the French Under 21-team and later promoted two years later to boss of the senior side. He took the post of managing the Les Bleus who were at the time riding high from winning the European Championships in 1984.

Before taking over from Michel Hidalgo, who resigned after the European Championships, Michel won the Olympic gold with France in Los Angeles. Although his inherited team were favourites to win the World Cup in 1986, West Germany ended the dream in the semi-finals even though the French had done the hard work in the quater-finals by knocking out Brazil.

He had a big fallout with ‘King Eric Catona’ who labelled him ‘a sack of shit’ and was eventually replaced by French legend Platini. HE remained as technical director of the French Football Federation until 1990 and then had a brief stint with Paris St Germain.

He worked with the Cameroon national team and took them to the 1994 World cup even though they were unable to progress past the group stages. He later moved to Arabian peninsular to coach Al Nasr.

In 1995 he was appointed boss of Morocco and nearly took them to the second phase of the 1998 World Cup only to be denied after Norway had scored a late winner against defending champions Brazil which meant the Scandinavians and not the Atlas Lions joined Brazil in the next phase.

He had spells with the United Arab Emirates and Tunisian national sides and a period in Greece with Aris Salonika followed before a return to Morocco as boss of Raja Casablanca.

In 2004 he was appointed coach of Cote d’Ivoire, charged with leading the Elephants to their first ever World Cup.

Michel admitted that the challenge was a tempting and the fact that the Elephants had never qualified for the World Cup gave him something to aim at

The mission was duly accomplished although had Cameroon converted a stoppage-time penalty against Egypt then the story might have been totally diffrent.

However since qualification, Michel has strengthened his backroom staff by appointing another veteran coach Gerard Gili as his assistant.

Finally, Michel has a playing squad with an average age of 25, that many of his 31 fellow World Cup qualifiers will envy as he approaches his fourth tournament but the first ever for the west African state.

He surely as the experience and charisma to charm the rising stars of Africa.