Champions League goal for Philippe Clément in Monaco
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Monaco (AFP) – Qualify the team for the next Champions League: the Belgian Philippe Clement, Monaco coach, current 6th in L1, will have to succeed at the end of the season where his trigger Niko Kovac had failed last season.
The Belgian technician signed a contract for two and a half seasons with Monaco on Monday, until June 2024, with the priority objective of qualifying Monaco directly for the next Champions League, while Kovac, dismissed on Thursday, had not brought the team only in third place last summer.
For this, Clement, debauched from Club Bruges where he was in 2nd place in the Belgian championship, arrives accompanied by three assistants, already in his staff this season.
They are Frédéric De Boever, specific goalkeeper trainer, Jonas Ivens, physical preparation specialist, and Johan Van Rumst, who, like him, signed a contract until June 2024.
Belgian champion with Club Bruges in 2020 and 2021, as before with Genk in 2019, the former Belgian international defender, who played in the 1998 World Cup in France and who is perfectly French-speaking, does not take over a Monegasque team in crisis , but behind on its objectives.
Go back four places
Because when entering the return phase of an L1 where no team has managed to keep pace with Paris SG, Monaco, 29 points, finds itself four lengths from Nice, 33 points, 2nd currently and virtually qualified qualified for the Champions League.
Monaco and Clement will therefore have to either move up four places and four points in L1, or win the Europa League, a competition in which Monaco will play the round of 16 and whose winner will be directly seeded in C1 next season.
“His demonstrated ability to pull the group of young and talented people while achieving ever higher goals over the course of his career in the right person to pursue logically, and with ambition intact, the chapter we opened at the start of the last season aimed at bringing AS Monaco back into the elite of French football and on the European stage on a lasting basis, “announced Oleg Petrov, the club’s vice-president and general manager, in a press release.
Achieving a direct qualification in C1 is the priority objective, even imperative, stated to the Belgian coach by the Monegasque leaders, who had not digested the elimination against the Ukrainians of Shaktar Donetsk (0-1, 2 – 2 ap) last August.
Play again at the big table
This elimination, which had greatly displeased the president, the Russian billionaire Dmitri Rybolovlev, as well as the estimation by Paul Mitchell the club’s sports director and by Oleg Petrov, of a form of wear and tear in the relationship between Kovac and his group, precipitated the change of coach.
Kovac’s record with Monaco (74 games, including 57 in L1, with 32 wins, 11 draws, 14 losses) has been good. But it remained insufficient in the eyes of Rybolovlev, who wants to see his club play at the table of the greatest in C1.
Or, since its last catastrophic participation (one point in six matches) in the Champions League in 2018-2019, under the orders of Leonardo Jardim then Thierry Henry, the club has shown chronic instability, unsuited to consistency results at the highest level.
In thirty-six months, have succeeded Thierry Henry (October 13, 2018 – January 19, 2019), Franck Passi (1 match), Leonardo Jardim (January 25, 2019 – December 28, 2019), Robert Moreno (December 29, 2019 – July 18 2020), Niko Kovac (July 19, 2020 – December 30, 2021), Stéphane Nado (Sunday in Rouen in the Coupe de France against Quevilly-Rouen), and now Philippe Clement, at the head of the Principality’s team.
The Belgian technician, who will lead his first training on Tuesday, could be presented on Wednesday. He will start in L1 on the bench of Monaco, Sunday in Nantes.
© 2022 AFP