Julien Fournier gave a long interview published this Thursday in the sports daily L'Equipe. The INEOS Director of Football answered Antoine Maumon de Longevialle's questions and looked at the first part of the season of the Gym, reflecting on things during the winter break with the Aiglons having returned to training on Tuesday.

While OGC Nice were 12th in the league season heading into the winter break (with a match in hand), Julien Fournier refused to talk of failure: "You talk of failure, me I say we're just not up with where we want to be. Whether we've failed or not is something that will be assessed at the end of the season. We are totally capable of getting back into contention. The team lacks confidence." With players who "feel responsible for the situation and are unanimous in saying there is a good squad and a good team.  They are at the same time preoccupied and also very positive for the second part of the season. They continue to believe." That confidence is shared by the INEOS Director of Football: "Beyond the words, of course it's feasible. In terms of points, what we have done in the first part of the season isn't good enough. But there's still more than half the league season to be played. In terms of the way we have played, we have seen some very promising things. And then, there's another parameter that hasn't been taken into account by the public at large: everyone is focusing on Dante's injury, and that was massively important; but in the last game we played, we must have been without seven players. At Nîmes, even if we won the match, we were missing eight players."

"Adrian Ursea is at the service of the club"

On the subject of the first part of the season, Julien Fournier also spoke about the departure of Patrick Vieira: "On a human level, I had a very good relationship with Patrick. Even if things weren't always simple with us leaving and then coming back, things returned to order on both sides. Patrick knows the reasons for his departure. We explained things to him and I'm not going to go into the details in the press. I am convinced he'll succeed at the top level." Since the match against Stade de Reims (0-0, J13), Adrian Ursea, the former assistant to the 1998 World Cup winner, has been on the rouge et noir bench with a mission that is not meant to extend beyond the 2020/21 season: "Adri knows exactly what he's been asked to do, and that's to coach the team until the end of the season. He knows we'll be looking to appoint a coach for next season. Everything has been done totally transparently with him and the other members of the coaching staff. The door isn't closed on gong beyond the end of the season with him, but it's not the starting point. He's someone - like Patrick was - who gives his body and soul for the team. He has taken on a challenge that he wasn't destined for. He's someone of great value, who has very clear ideas on football and can take on the challenge and give the team its confidence back. He's at the service of the club and will remain, whatever happens, in the environment of Nice or Ineos."

"Dampen down expectations"

Finally the Director of Football refuted the idea that the squad is too young: "I fight against that idea. Walter Benitez is not a youngster, Youcef Atal is no longer young. The same goes for Hassane Kamara, Morgan Schneiderlin, Lees-Melou, Rony Lopes. Kasper Dolberg already has European and international experience. Jeff Reine-Adélaïde is captain of France Under-21s. I told him that when we signed him we brought him in as a player and also as a captain. It's down to those players to take on part of the leadership role that was Dante's, for the club and for their own careers."

While he judges the presence of INEOS as offering "extreme security" in an "extremely serious" economic context for French football, Julien Fournier sent out a reminder as a conclusion: "Since the arrival of Ineos, we have been trying to dampen down expectations and to explain that things will take time. They'd seen what football is like at Lausanne. That's like a little laboratory for them and they knew that we might have difficult seasons. If it was enough to put in a little bit of money and to buy three players in order to become a big club, then people would know about it. In 16 or 17 months, 15 new players have joined. That's a huge number. Amongst those players, there have been a lot of injuries. For things to come together, it sometimes takes time, especially when the confidence is lacking. Circumstances came together last season so that we were ahead of schedule in qualifying for Europe, something that wasn't planned."

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