Jean-Louis Gasset : "Our destiny is in our hands"

You’ll have to face Nice with several absent players.

We’ll make do. Already, in the first leg of the championship, I remember, it was difficult to create a balanced team. We used different strategies with the remaining players and many players from the Gambardella Cup who will be on the team. That’s part of the job. Sometimes you have to make a player play a position he’s never played before, change strategies to confuse your adversary a bit.

Did the outcome of the match against Montpellier disappoint you?

I know that the expulsion was the turning point of this match. Even if theirs was so harsh for them and Rémy was given the only red card of his career, that day, with 11 against 10…But, it was a bit more difficult, especially without our leader. I saw people disappointed because the match did not go the way we wanted it to go. We used the ball more poorly than usual, we didn’t create many openings to score. If we had tied, we would have confirmed our qualification for the European Cup. But that’s the way of Football and we’re not going to rewrite history.

What is your judgement of Nice’s team?

Like us, Nice has to deal with notable absences. We both have our injured players, our suspended players. Nice won’t have its two central defenders, we won’t have our technical leaders. We have to find a strategy, a lineup, that will help us to earn three points. We’ll maybe play differently, with players with other qualities. The team will maybe be less technical but will be composed of players with other values. Nice has no more games to play but facing a relaxed team is sometimes dangerous.

Do you now see third place as an unattainable goal?

I told you last week: we want to secure 4th place. We had three opportunities to secure this ranking. We didn’t capitalize on the first, we have two remaining. After Montpellier we were disappointed. It was an end to a streak of six victories and a time game. We have to go back and tell ourselves that we’ll play a second game in a stadium committed to us. Being able to celebrate this qualification with our fans is maybe a sign of destiny. In any case, that’s the outcome I imagined.

In what state of mind will you tackle this next match for the European Cup?

We have our destiny in our hands. That’s why we can’t spread ourselves too thin. We have to take advantage of this and drive this home. We have another opportunity to reach our goal Saturday. My current thought is to reach the club’s goal: get the team to where they want to be, in its DNA, which is the European Cup.