He had arrived on the balls of the feet in June 2014 to succeed Claudio Ranieri on the bench at monaco. He left the principality as a king after having offered a title of champion of France (2017) and two beautiful epics in europe (2015 and 2017). But Leonardo Jardim may well have presented a very positive balance as coach of Monaco, he was not able to withstand the crisis of results current that is rampant in Monaco with only one victory in three months of competition. It has been officially relieved of his duties on Thursday, and the ex-world champion 1998, Thierry Henry is tipped to succeed him.
Yet, for the past four years, Jardim embodied the man suitable to carry out the sports policy of the club based on a massive number of purchases and sales of footballers. Each year, in the fall, the direction of monaco, it was a huge project to rebuild the team with a workforce in turmoil in the summer by a score of new faces for as many starts.
Sisyphus on the Rock
It must be said that his ex-club employer had adopted since 2013 a sport strategy clearly visible and focused on the purchase of talented young players destined to be enhanced by the coach’s job to be sold much more expensive. Thomas Lemar, Kylian Mbappé, Bernardo Silva, Tiémoué Bakayoko and Anthony Martial or Benjamin Mendy are the most beautiful successes of this policy. But this orientation transforms the club each mercato in the vast hall of the airport where the recruits meet with the players on departure.
in the Face of these sites immense and repetitive, Leonardo Jardim has surpassed all expectations and long held. It was launched in the big bath on the top level of young players have now become stars and sold to big european clubs with a great value for the ASM. Despite the instability of his locker room, he was able to establish a guideline based on frameworks such as Moutinho, Fabinho, Raggi, Glik or Falcao. On the tactical level, it is close to a chameleon which adapts its appearance to the context : defensive game in 2015, with a team of old hands experienced (Carvalho, Berbatov…), tactical offensive in 2017, with no less than 107 goals in Ligue 1. Each season, the team had a new face.
But the wear and tear of the context has been because of him. Force to imitate Sisyphus and starting over constantly this undermining of reconstruction, a certain weariness has settled in his house, but especially in his main relay to the dressing room. Fabinho and Moutinho, players on whom he counted the most, are gone this summer, and frames remaining – Falcao, Glik, Jemerson, Subasic – they did not seem to have enough energy to get the team on track after a started nightmare. All things considered, the situation of monaco is reminiscent of Real Madrid : after experiencing the peaks and lived a luxurious sporting adventures, a decompression occurred with leaders transforming themselves into a ball. This is not the wave of departures of players who had reason to Jardim. No, it is those who stayed with him without having the mind and the desire to start all over again and rewrite a new page.
Edgar Morin and Kylian Mbappé
The sacking of the coach is Portuguese, can seem so unfair at first when we see the miracles performed in the past. But with the benefit of hindsight, it is understandable. Four years on a bench is almost a feat as a professional at the look of the precariousness of this function. The Ligue 1 is losing one of the technicians the most knowledgeable in its history. Very far from the stereotype of the French coach self-centered and not very open to new ways of working, Leonardo Jardim was a new way to see the job in France. University (yes, in Portugal, the coaches can learn their trade in college), reader of Edgar Morin, he’s part of this generation of coaches, who have been able to reinvent their business in order to be in line with the football today.
Leonardo Jardim has in effect introduced the periodization tactics in France that aims to do more to segment the technical work, physical work and tactics. To improve the intensity of the movements and phases of transition from defensive play to attacking, the ball is involved in the work of the land and the physical preparation is less understood as a workshop. The results of this method have sometimes given results exciting and spectacular. “A pianist doesn’t train by running around his piano. For football, it’s the same, ” he explained. For Jardim, it is the end of his recital at Monaco without almost a single false note.
