Moving Forward 2011 spread

 

Aime Jacquet .Mentor ,bright example and winner

Aimé Étienne Jacquet (born November 27, 1941) is a French football coach and former player, and manager of the France national football team when they won the 1998 FIFA World Cup.

Biography

Aimé Jacquet was born in Sail-sous-Couzan, Loire. He began his career as an amateur player for his local club, US Couzan, while working in a factory. Scouted by Saint-Étienne, he joined Les Verts in 1959 and signed his first professional contract in 1961. One of the most successful soccer clubs of the time, Saint-Étienne, won an impressive 5 league titles and 3 French Cups in his 11 years with the club. He also played for the national side, but his international career failed to take off because Les Bleus performed poorly during his years on the team. In 1973, he left Saint-Étienne for bitter regional rivals Olympique Lyonnais , where he ended his career as a player.

A “provisional” manager

Jacquet worked as a manager for clubs around France and gained an impressive list of accolades for Bordeaux during the 1980s, leading them to 3 league titles, 2 French Cups, 2 European semi-finals and 1 quarter-final. Dismissed by President Claude Bez, he left Bordeaux to hone his managerial skills with more modest teams like Montpellier and Nancy.
In 1991, he accepted a position with the National Technical Training Centre (Direction Technique Nationale).
In 1992, he was appointed the assistant to then national team manager Gérard Houllier.
After the French national team was knocked out of the running for the 1994 FIFA World Cup by Israel and Bulgaria, Aimé Jacquet was made the manager of the national team, but only provisionally. After a promising series of friendly matches (notably a victory over Italy in Naples in February 1994), his provisional status was upgraded to permanent.
Jacquet initially selected Eric Cantona as captain and made him the team’s playmaker. Cantona had successfully restarted his career in the FA Premier League and was playing some of the best football of his career, but he kicked a Crystal Palace fan in January 1995, which earned him a year-long suspension from all international matches.
As Cantona was the key playmaker, Jacquet was forced to make major changes to the team in the wake of his suspension. Jacquet revamped the squad with some new blood and built it around Zinedine Zidane and other younger players, while dropping Cantona, Jean-Pierre Papin, and David Ginola. Jacquet’s choice of players for the tournament caused some fans to grit their teeth but he succeeded in helping France qualify for the Euro 96.
Making it all the way to the semi-finals, Les Bleus managed to show they could survive without veterans such as Jean-Pierre Papin, Eric Cantona, or David Ginola. Jacquet himself stated that the team had done well without Cantona, and that he wanted to keep faith with the players who had taken them so far.[1] The team’s good showing in Euro 96 meant that Jacquet stayed in the media’s good graces, for the time-being.

After being criticised, lampooned and even insulted before being acclaimed and eventually adored, AimeJacquet can truly say he traversed the full spectrum of managerial experiences during his four years in charge of the French national team. He took up the reins at a time when the position was regarded as something of a poison chalice, with Les Bleus having spectacularly botched their attempt to qualify for the 1994 FIFA World Cup USA TM.

Once in charge, he soon set his sights on world supremacy and duly accomplished his mission. And then rather than use his success to tout his services to the highest bidder, he simply moved upstairs and took control of France’s national training system before a well-earned retirement came in 2006. Fitting for a quiet man who sent an entire nation into ecstasy in 1998 and whose dignified appearance conceals an intense and studious passion for the game he has made his life.

A natural ability

Long before that unforgettable summer when he guided his country to the top of the world, Jacquet had already enjoyed the sort of playing career that many only dream about. A resilient defensive midfielder, he was part of the great Saint Etienne team of the late 1960s and earned his place in French footballing lore by helping Les Verts win five league titles and three French Cups in his eleven years at the fabled club. In 1973, he finally left the Forez and signed for bitter regional rivals Lyon, with whom he ended his playing career.

Having been heavily influenced by the legendary coaches he worked under at Saint Etienne – men such as Jean Snella, Albert Batteux and Robert Herbin – it was only natural that Jacquet sought to turn his hand to management. His first chance to impose his vision of how football should be played came by the banks of the Garonne, where he took over at Bordeaux. He promptly guided the Bordelais to the most successful decade of their history, during which they were crowned champions three times, picked up the French Cup twice and reached two European semi-finals and one quarter-final. Unsurprisingly, Jacquet became a highly respected figure among both players and peers.

Right man for France

After his stint at Bordeaux, Jacquet opted to fine-tune his theories and training ideas with less illustrious clubs, starting with Montpellier before moving on to Nancy, where a certain Michel Platini first captured the attention of the football world. However, as someone who is by nature discreet, he then decided it was time to withdraw from the limelight and, in 1991, accepted a post with the National Technical Training Centre (Direction Technique Nationale), where he worked to develop French football more or less behind the scenes. On 15 July 1992, however, he was appointed assistant to then national team manager Geard Houllier.

Les Bleus had just completed a disastrous venture to the European Championships in Sweden and one year later would embark on a nightmarish run that saw them blow qualification for USA 94 by capitulating at home to Israel (2-3) and Bulgaria (1-2). After that disaster, public confidence in the team fell to almost subterranean levels, and few believed France would achieve anything of note despite hosting the 1998 FIFA World Cup finals. A new manager was needed, someone who would build afresh and infuse a crestfallen squad with renewed confidence. A mighty task, one that not many could be expected to accomplish. The French Football Federation decided the best course of action would be to hire someone from within their own ranks: Aimé Jacquet stood head and shoulders above anyone else.

He took to this sizable challenge with relish, slowly but surely overhauling the wounded French squad. He showed he knew how to be tough, but also that he was capable of putting a comforting arm around players when required. Whatever approach he opted for, the goal was always the same — to build a better team. The fruit of the new boss’s labours were discernible as early as his first match in charge (versus Italy in Naples on 16 February 1994), when a side playing with new-found heart and verve triumphed 1-0 thanks to a Youri Djorkaeff strike.

Zidane becomes the one

The major foundation of this new French team’s success was, however, laid in late summer of 1994 when, in the 63rd minute of a friendly match that the French were losing 2-0 to the Czech Republic, Jacquet gave an international debut to a 22 year-old Bordeaux player by the name of Zinedine Zidane. Thirty minutes and two goals later, Zidane had untangled Les Bleus from a decidedly sticky situation, turning probable defeat into a creditable draw and introducing himself on the international scene in spectacular fashion.

At that time, the team’s play-making duties were still falling to Eric Cantona, a gifted maverick but one whose character tried the patience of more than one boss. On 18 January 1995, Jacquet took a bold decision and, in the face of much criticism, handed Zidane the place that had hitherto been the preserve of the man Manchester United fans called Le Roi.

At the Euros, building up to 1998

Having topped their qualifying group, France went in to EURO 96 as one of the favourites for overall glory. Though his side somewhat failed to live up to that billing – going out on penalties in the semi-final to the tournament’s surprise package, the Czech Republic – Jacquet learned enough from the English expedition to put out an even stronger side for the 1998 FIFA World Cup.

He used the following two years of friendly matches to do just that. His focus was clear and his moves deliberate, yet a sceptical media poured scorn on his “tinkering”; some press commentators went even further and rather than concentrate on his decisions or technical merits preferred to assail the man for his quiet and introverted personality. Jacquet never sunk to this baiting, and instead continued to work towards his target, which was not just to perform well in “France’s” FIFA World Cup, but to win it.

All the right moves

When the big competition came round, the French had no trouble negotiating their way through the group stage, sweeping aside South Africa (3-0), Saudi Arabia (4-0) and Denmark (2-1). The records may show that they only squeezed past Paraguay in the second round thanks to a Laurent Blanc’s golden goal (sealing a 1-0 win), but the fact is that the hosts controlled the match from start to finish and would have won far more comfortably had their finishing been better. The French steamroller then carried on relentlessly, overcoming Italy (0-0, 4-3 on pens) and Croatia (2-1) to set up a final match showdown with Brazil.

Once there, Les Bleus could not have dreamed of a better outcome, and while it is true that the Seleçao may have been knocked out of their stride by the mysterious affliction that struck Ronaldo on the morning of the game, France’s emphatic 3-0 victory came courtesy of the most complete 90 minutes of football of the Jacquet era.

By guiding his homeland to the top of the world, Jacquet sent all of France into a month-long celebration and then, ever the quiet man, returned to his beloved DTN until retirement in 2006, satisfied with the knowledge that he had achieved what he had set out to do. Without ever shedding his dignity, he had served up the perfect answer to all those who had been so acerbic in their criticisms over the previous years. His finest achievement, however, was to have succeeded in unifying not just a team, but an entire country.

Tactics

By France 98 Jacquet had honed his innovative 4-2-1-3 system into one of the most solid in the history of the French national team. In front of goalkeeper Fabien Barthez stood a fantastic four-man defence consisting of Lilian Thuram, Marcel Desailly, Laurent Blanc and Bixente Lizarazu. These ‘four musketeers’ deployed a zone-marking method, with Blanc operating as an old-fashioned sweeper. Sitting in front of this four-man blockade were Didier Deschamps and Emmanuel Petit, who mopped up incalculable amounts of possession before knocking the ball to the team’s one central playmaker, Zinedine Zidane. The three attackers consisted of one centre-forward (Stephane Guivarc’h or David Trezeguet) and two wide men (Thierry Henry and Youri Djorkaeff). Jacquet controlled Italy and Brazil in the finals by reverting to the same system he used at the European Championships in 1996 – three ball-winners (Christian Karembeu, Petit and Deschamps) across the midfield.

 

Tribute to Federico Fellini

Federico Fellini is considered one of the top film directors of all time, especially in Italy. His films highlighted artistic fantasy and desire and the line between reality and magic vanished in the scenes that he depicted in his movies, thereby creating the surreal imagery that many Italians, and in fact many playgoers around the world, have come to relish.

Fellini was born in the coastal town of Rimini in the resort city Adriatic on January 20th, 1920. His town drew variety show performers and circuses in large numbers and he was enamored by this, evidence of which can be found in the dream-like characteristics of his movies. In his youth, he abandoned a lot of career streams ostensibly to pursue the ideal job. He enrolled in law and then dropped out, took up a job as a crime reporter only to quit later and in fact did not even join the Centro Sperimentale di Cinematografias. He settled down nicely in his job as a nomadic caricaturist and in 1939, was hired by the popular comic bi-weekly, Marc ‘Aurelio. This bi weekly made many a script writer and a director in the postwar period and hence in a way, helped Fellini launch his career.

It was his good fortune that the Italian culture of those days was very conducive to pursue a career in the movies. His strong points of sketching caricatures and cartoons and acting as a stand up comedian stood him in good stead when he entered cinema. It was indeed a tribute to Fellini that writer Italo Calvino once referred to his cinematic language as a “forcing of the photographic image in a direction that carries it from an image of caricature towards that of the visionary.”

In the year 1943, Fellini married actress Giulietta Masina, with whom he had acted in many films and whom he referred to as a person who has had profound influence on his work.

His various works

The turning point in his film career took place in 1945, when he was asked to co –author the script of Roberto Rosellini’s ‘Open City.’ Three years later, Fellini acted in Rosselini’s ‘Ways of Love’ where he (Fellini) played a tramp. ‘Variety Lights,’ released in 1950, was the first film he directed (in co operation with the famous Alberto Lattuada). In the years to come, he directed critically acclaimed films like ‘The White Sheik’ (A comedy about a woman’s love affair with a comic strip character), and ‘I Vitteloni’ (a story about a group of aimless young wanderers). ‘La Strada’, in 1954, brought him to limelight in the international arena. One of the most memorable movies of all time, this movie is about an innocent young woman sold to a cruel man working in a circus. The movie became a masterpiece and not only Fellini, but Nino Rota’s haunting music and a brilliant performance by Masina, the innocent girl, were responsible for its success. The crowning glory came when the movie won the Oscar prize for the best ‘Foreign language film’ category.

The hallmark works of his career were ‘La Dolce Vita’ and ‘8 1/2’ which he made in 1960 and 1963 respectively. The former was a journalist’s view of the contemporary Italian society and a very controversial movie that thrilled and incensed audiences the world over for its free depiction of sexuality (The Catholic church did not take this kindly) and criticisms aimed at Italy (which did not, naturally, go well with the Italian government). Having given the world a taste of what he was capable of delivering, people eagerly awaited his next movie, ‘8 1/2.’ ‘8 1/2’ was a well-calculated risk which went well among the masses. Having made a successful movie in La Dolce Vita, Fellini was under pressure to deliver. Since he did not know what movie to make next, after much thought, he decided to make a movie about a director who did not know what movie to make next. Fellini brilliantly depicted the mental trials that a film maker in such a state would be undergoing using surreal imagery where there was no distinction between reality and fantasy – a theme he loved most.

Fellini’s first movie in colour was ‘Juliet of the spirits’, which was released in 1965. This movie once again starred Masina, whose career was waning and who had begun to have personal problems with Fellini. Juliet, in this film, explored the mind of a disturbed high class housewife and, for the first time, Fellini got more brickbats for a movie, than bouquets.

‘Satyricon’ is lauded by many as his perfect film. The most fantastical of all his movies, this work of his exposes the obscene escapades of bi sexual characters in a pre-Christian world. Fellini classifies the film as ‘science-fiction of the past’ and true to the tag, there are a lot of scenes in the movie that are left hanging, leaving the audiences guessing what they really depicted. With a variety of elements like Sex (including nudity), an erotic feast (and even an orgy), dwarves, violent action and creatures from the fables, this movie was a visual treat. The critics were divided in their opinion, some non-sparing in their remarks, some describing it to be a path breaking movie which will revolutionise the way films are made.

The gradual decline

Since the time he made this movie, he has been less consistent in gaining praise and acceptance from the people. Later movies like ‘The Clowns(1971)’, ‘Roma(1972)’, and the little-known ‘Orchestral rehearsal(1979)’ did include his central theme of fantasy and dreamlike characteristics, but it was beginning to get evident that his best was past him. ‘Amarcord,’ which he made in 1974, was his best movie after ‘Satyricon’ and it won him his fourth Oscar for ‘Best Foreign Film.’

As the 80’s progressed, he found it increasingly difficult to convince people to fund his films. His final movie was made in 1990 and was titled ‘Voice of the Moon.’

Post retirement

Since the ‘Voice of the Moon’ Fellini slipped into partial retirement and was pursuing other projects. He won an Oscar for ‘Lifetime Achievement in Film making’ in 1994, which he graciously dedicated to Masina. A stroke attacked him in the August of 1994 and he slipped into a coma later that year. At the age of 73, Fellini died. And the fact that his death came a day after his 50th wedding anniversary saddened the event even more for Masina. (Masina died five months later due to cancer). Thousands of people attended the funeral ceremony in his small hometown of Rimini. The casket was taken to the cinema theatres where Fellini had watched his initial films as a small boy.

Such was his fame that the International airport in Rimini has been named after him. There are people who adore him, there are those who say his themes and movie making styles are repetitive, but none would dare challenge the fact that he has been one of the most influential Italian movie directors of all time and his movies have given all lots to think about. And for a man who looks up upon the great film directors like Kurosawa and Bergman, he hasn’t done badly himself either, with four Oscars for best movie under his belt.