Exchanges between football and rugby coaches are quite rare, but it does happen. Eddie Jones, the former England coach now at the helm of Australia, explained that he had spent time with Pep Guardiola when he was in charge of FC Barcelona. Another exchange took place recently since Laurent Labit, assistant to Fabien Galthié, spent a few days with the London club Arsenal.
The former coach of Montauban, Castres and Racing 92, “passionate about football because interested in the way they work”, said Wednesday in the Super Moscato Show on RMC: “They came to spend three or four days in November with us, before the game against South Africa. Then they invited us. It fell last week. I arrived Tuesday evening in London, I stayed until Saturday.
At the Gunners, Laurent Labit “did three days of training and the match on Friday evening at the Emirates Stadium against Southampton (3-3). It was extraordinary. We talked a lot about the game, training. But especially the game. There are many similarities in the terms we use today. They have given up possession a bit, even if they are interested in having it. But above all they want the territory, to play higher up the field. This is precisely the problem they have.”
And the technician added: “They were starting to think last week for the game this (Wednesday) evening against Manchester City, not to stay too much in their camp and see how they could get the ball out effectively without losing it in their camp. Because they know they’re going to get punished right away with the guys up front at City.” It didn’t work because by winning with authority against Arsenal (4-1), under the leadership of a sparkling Kevin de Bruyne, Manchester City may have tipped the race for the Champions League title. England by returning to two points from the Gunners on the 33rd day.
“We shared a lot. We had presented our game, they had listened to what we had done. A lot of things came back and they wanted to know what we meant behind it all, continues Laurent Labit. It’s true that it was very interesting to discuss the game that we thought about with the XV of France, because we are good when the game is unstructured and we manage to create disorder by kicking or by our defense .”
