NM1 – Stéphane Dao, Toulouse coach: “It’s politics that does nothing for us”
Toulouse is the fourth most populous municipality in France after Paris, Marseille, and Lyon, and has already appeared several times in the French first division. The TBC is currently in NM1 and may seem in an environment conducive to a return to the professional basket. Not so sure, actually.
In any case, his trainer Stéphane Dao assures The Dispatch that his club cannot financially maintain its best elements and that the Pro B appears as a practically inaccessible peak.
“To evolve in Pro B you need three ingredients,” he says. “The ambition, the budget and the structures. Ambition is very easy to declare. Just say “we want to go to Pro B”. The budget ? We are struggling but we are not there yet. And yet there are good souls who stick to it like “Décisive Pass” which does an excellent job.
And the structures require daily life?
“There, it is the policy which does nothing for us. I say it and I assume it! The training conditions we have are unacceptable. We only train three times a week in our gym. And I want to say it, we cannot respect the FFBB regulations on the reception of opposing teams who cannot film on match days. I don’t know if at the end of the season we will have a financial or sporting sanction, but a chosen one is certain, outside we will have the same preferential treatment. Currently, to make us touch the Pro B, there is only ambition. For the rest I am sorry we have neither the structures nor the budget.