The people who’ve influenced the Lyon coach and the people he’s influenced.
Gérard Houllier has a philosophical take on football management. “Our job is to make the fans happy,” he says. “When we win, 45000 people go home happy. When we lose, it not only affects them, it affects their cats.”
Throughout his career, the Lyon coach has brought smiles to a lot of faces and, it must be said, a lot of pain to a lot of kicked cats. And there hasn’t been much middle ground in between. He took Lens into Europe and Paris Saint-Germain to the championship, but his reign as French national coach ended in acrimony. He revived Liverpool and was rewarded with a treble of cups, but almost paid for it with his life.
Now in charge at Lyon, Houllier has impressively guided les Gones to two consecutive titles and two Champions League quarter-finals – good news all round for Lyon’s felines.
Alun Evans
The mop-haired forward scored the first Liverpool goal the Frenchman ever saw, in the first minute of a 10-0 rout of Dundalk in the 1969 Fairs Cup. The 24-year old Houllier had come to Merseyside to be an assistant French teacher at Alsop High School in Walton.
“When I walked into the staff room,” Houllier recalled, “the question was never about which part of France I came from – it was whether I was a Red or a Blue. Even though Everton under Harry Catterick were the better team at the time, I’d always been a Red.” Living in digs in Toxteth, Houllier also researched a study paper entitled Growing Up In a Deprived Area.
Geoff Maitland
One of Houllier’s team mates in the Alsop Old Boys’ Second XI.
“He was a robust forward and we were very successful while he played for us in the 1969/70 season,” Maitland recalled. “He was one of the lads, He’d go for a drink with us after games in pubs like the Royal Oak on Muirhead Avenue.”
Peter Robinson
In 1970, Houllier returned to France, where he became a part-time player and, at the age of just 26, coach of Le Touquet. He rose rapidly, ending up a Lens and PSG, but kept in touch with friends on Merseyside, including then Liverpool chief executive Peter Robinson who, in the 1980’s recommended him to Spurs. But Tottenham chairman Irving Scholar felt the club needed a British figurehead.
Patrice Bergues
Houllier met his right-hand man at grammar school. Bergues played in midfield for Houllier at Noeux-les-Mines, then succeeded him as boss of Lens, before they worked together at the French Football Federation. Bergues followed Houllier to Liverpool as first-team coach and is now his assistant at Lyon.
David Ginola
Houllier took les Bleus to the brink of the 1994 World Cup. The very brink. Needing just a point from the last match against Bulgaria, France looked comfortable until Ginola gave the ball away with a bad pass and Bulgaria scored a late winner. He became Houllier’s scapegoat for this unexpected failure. “I saw him on television,” Ginola recalled, “and he was saying things like, “David Ginola is the murderer of the team.”
Thierry Henry
“His potential and personality impressed me from day one,” said Houllier of the teenage Henry, captain of the France team he managed to the 1996 UEFA European Under 18 Championship. Titi scored the only goal in the final against Spain. The squad also featured Nicolas Anelka, David Trezeguet, Mikael Silvestre and William Gallas. Impressed by England’s strike partnership of Michael Owen and Emile Heskey at the tournament, Houllier reunited them at Liverpool.
Roy Evans
It’ll never work, muttered the critics when Houllier was appointed joint manager of Liverpool alongside boot room stalwart Evans in 1998, and they were right. The partnership lasted barely three months. The players handled things with remarkable diplomacy, addressing Houllier as “boss” and Evans as “gaffer.”
Mark Waller and Abbas Rashid
Waller was the Liverpool club doctor who diagnosed Houllier’s heart problem at half-time during a match against Leeds United in 2001 and probably saved his life. Rashid was the surgeon who performed the eleven-hour operation to repair a dissected aorta at Liverpool’s Broad Green Hospital. Waller had been tending to Emile Heskey when Houllier complained of chest pains. “Don’t worry,” Houllier told Waller, “he is worth more money than me, but I am more urgent.”
Delfi Geli
The Alvés defender secured Houllier’s treble of cups in 2001, heading the ball into his own net in the 117th minute of the UEFA Cup final as he tried to defend a Gary McAllister free kick. Houllier described McAllister as, “My most inspirational signing.”
Steven Gerrard
When Peter Robinson started the talks that brought Houllier to Liverpool in 1998, he recalls: “I told him he wouldn’t have to worry about finding a world class midfielder. I told him there was a young player in our youth team who would be world class within two years.” Houllier promoted Gerrard from the Liverpool academy to the first-team squad and, in 2003, made him captain.
Guy Roux
Auxerre’s legendary coach has been a close friend of Houllier’s for almost 40 years, calling him “my suave half brother.” In the autumn of 2001, they both recuperated from heart attacks in the Corsican town or Porticcio. “We are wonderful friends,” said Roux, “and those ten days made us and our wives even more tight knit.”
Alexi Sayle
The portly Reds supporting comedian, actor (Indiana Jones And The Last Crusade) and author was born and brought up in Anfield and was a pupil at Alsop High School in the 1960’s where Houllier was an assistant teacher.
This article was first published in the UEFA Champions magazine and is published with their permission and with full acknowledgements.
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