Patrick Duflos, new Spacer’s Toulouse coach: “Building something lasting”
Patrick Duflos (56), the new Spacer’s coach, has assigned himself to his choice to join Toulouse. Ambitious, he does not want to “skip the steps” before “stabilizing the club at the top of the table”.
Patrick, can you explain to us what motivated your choice to join Spacer’s?
When the leaders called me, they presented me with a long-term project where I could invest myself to bring my experience, something new too. There is the joint desire to professionalize a little this club with which I have always had good relations and whose philosophy, values and operation correspond to my ideas. All of this meant that this project immediately interested me and it was logically done quite quickly.
In your opinion, are the limited budget and the desire to rely on training compatible with the project mentioned?
This is what I experienced in Sète for a very long time. In return like that, but the medium-term objective is to try to structure itself better and to get some money too (he smiles). To progress sportingly and structurally.
Sportingly, the club has been chasing the play-offs for five years. Is that the goal you set?
Yes, but in League A everyone can legitimately aim for the play-offs. It will be hard but you have to be a little ambitious and that’s the goal we really want to achieve. It’s going to take a lot of hard work, on and off the pitch. In the longer term, the idea is to climb the hierarchy and stabilize at the top of the table. We don’t just want to make a move, the ambition is to build something lasting. If it can be done (the play-offs, editor’s note) the first year, so much the better, but it will still take a certain patience not to cut corners.
It’s a very upset squad that you will have at your disposal. How do you recreate an identity?
This season Toulouse was in play-down and it was perhaps necessary to change. There is still a good backbone (Facundo Santucci, Luiz Sene, Antoine Pothron and Daniel Cagliari, editor’s note) and that’s very good. They had a difficult season and this experience will serve for the future. We’ll be announcing the incoming recruits soon and there will be a good mix I think.