Le Havre, the oldest French club crowned Ligue 2 champion on Friday, will return to Ligue 1 after 14 years of absence, and finally offer its Océane stadium the posters for which it was designed.
The unexpected slowdown at the end of an exceptional season delayed the deadline but it’s done, and the large blue vessel placed at the entrance to the city since 2012 capsized with joy in the last minutes of the match against Dijon.
“We are in Ligue 1, we are in Ligue 1”, sang the more than 23,000 supporters massed in the blue enclosure which had sounded hollow for a decade.
Several dozen of them, in too much of a hurry, almost spoiled the party by invading the field at the very end of added time, causing the match to be interrupted.
After a quarter of an hour of uncertainty, the referees reappeared on the field to give the final whistle, even though the Dijonnais had not returned, and the supporters then descended en masse on the lawn to celebrate.
While in the 2000s, the Ciel et Marine club made quick trips back and forth between L1 and L2, this rise is the result of an unexpected chemistry brought by a new management team installed last summer by the owner American Vincent Volpe.
Jean-Michel Roussier (passed by Marseille, Nancy and Mediapro) as president, the very young retiree Mathieu Bodmer as sports director and Luka Elsner, his last coach in Amiens (2019-2020) on the bench, had considered other clubs before becoming interested in Le Havre.
Arrived a week before the resumption of training, with a technical staff to recompose and a workforce to rebuild urgently, all without a lot of means, they did not imagine such success in their first season.
Although dull for several seasons, the HAC also started with a 0-0 draw against Grenoble and a 1-0 defeat at Valenciennes…
Except that Elsner’s men then did not lose for 32 matches in a row in the league, equaling a record in the 2nd division established by SC Sedan in 1955.
Recipe ? An effective cocktail between a contingent of vengeful players forgotten in their former clubs and some products from the club’s solid training center, often neglected by former coach Paul Le Guen (2019-2022).
The set is rarely spectacular, the HAC runs at an average of just over one goal per game (8th attack of L2), but its defense is intractable: 19 goals conceded in 38 games.
At the UNFP trophies on Sunday, Elsner was voted best L2 coach and the HAC placed four players in the standard team of the championship.
Leader since the 14th day, the HAC could have validated its rise much earlier but slowed down in the spring, with a high proportion of draws and two defeats in a row at the end of the season when it had none until then. suffered only one in August.
Enough to doubt some supporters, not yet recovered from the last two occasions when Le Havre had touched the L1. In 2016, just after the arrival of Volpe, the HAC had been beaten by one goal by Metz. And in 2018, he failed in the play-off in Ajaccio, during a nightmarish match punctuated by incidents on and around the field.
But the bad luck is over and the majestic Océane stadium will now host the elite of French football. In the euphoria of this unexpected season, he had also experienced the first sold-out HAC match in its history at the end of December for the reception of Bordeaux.
Even if the last comeback in 2008 did not leave only good memories: after a season of domination in L2, the HAC had remained ghostly in L1 and had been returned directly to the antechamber. It is now up to the club’s new trio to prove history wrong.
