Montpellier has chosen Chambéry coach Erick Mathé, also assistant coach of the France team, to replace from next season Patrice Canayer, who will leave the MHB in June after thirty years at its head, announced Friday the Hérault club. “I am delighted today to find Erick on the Montpellier Handball bench. He knows the national and European games, and is used to the sequences of matches and sustained rhythms. We will change coaches at the end of the season but we will keep the same ambitions,” said MHB president Julien Deljarry.
Mathé (52) signed a four-year contract with Montpellier after freeing himself from a three-year contract with Chambéry. The future MHB coach knows the Montpellier house well having been for three seasons (2015-18) the assistant coach of Canayer with whom he won the Champions League.
The day after the second victory in the Champions League (2018), the technician stood on his own two feet to lead Chambéry. He thus allowed the Savoyard club to win the Coupe de France (2019). In February 2020, the new coach of the France team Guillaume Gille, who succeeded Didier Dinart, called on Mathé to assist him as assistant.
At the end of August, shortly before the resumption of the championship and a year before the end of his contract, Canayer (62 years old) informed president Julien Deljarry of the fact that he would not continue his missions as coach and manager. For almost thirty years, the technician, originally from Nîmes, brought MHB to the top of French handball to give it a unique track record, marked by two victories in the Champions League (2003, 2018) and fourteen championship titles. of France.
Arriving in 1994 from Paris-SG, where he began his career, he shaped the MHB with his iron fist and therefore leaves a heavy legacy to Mathé. Montpellier, engaged in the Champions League, shares the championship leader’s place with Paris-SG before the 8th day.
