A party atmosphere filled the corridors of the Allianz Riviera, after the Aiglons’ victory over Nancy.  Lucien Favre arrived at his press conference with a big smile on his face. Verbatim.

Lucien, there we go, Nice will be in the Champions League next season…
Not exactly (smiles). Third place, yes, it is secured. We will need to go through the play-offs. But that’s another story, we are going to concentrate on today’s match and the next.

Can we say that you are happy tonight?
I am never unhappy (smiles). But we suffer in every game. Again, today it was tough. We aren’t the only side to struggle against them. We reacted well. But you can’t concede the goal that we conceded. We gave it to them, it’s not even a move. We carried on. It was difficult to find space. We scored a ‘battling’ equaliser. Recovery by Younes, who gets an assist with a tackle and Le Bihan put it away. Then we got going. At times, we were very good. But Nancy had some chances that worried me a bit.

Your top 3 scorers were missing tonight, and you still scored 3 goals…
Yes with Mika Seri and Le Bihan. Le Bihan isn’t one of our top scorers because of competition and his injury, but he has got quality. He played the ninety minutes, which we didn’t expect, we planned to take him off, but he felt good.

And what can you say about Mika Seri…
He has an incredible number of assists, and he is now getting goals too, it’s becoming magnificent! To hold onto him? He will almost certainly be in demand, that’s for sure. Last season, my predecessor, who did incredibly, had a system that revolved around Ben Arfa. With this year’s system which is different, Seri has more of the ball. He is only 25, it’s normal that he is improving.

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What objectives will you set for the upcoming matches with a clash against PSG in 15 days time?
We will look at playing better against Toulouse than we did today. And that’s it. We will think about PSG after Toulouse.

Do you measure what you have achieved for the club? The podium is secured with five games to go, 73 points, 2 defeats in 33 matches… 
Not necessarily. We are very happy. The points are there, 73 points, that’s brilliant. But as a coach, we savour the moment but we need to move on to the next challenge quickly. I know that it plays on the mind a bit, and that we haven’t been at ease in some games. I think first and foremost about the things that need to be improved. Toulouse are a side that haven’t lost many in this half of the season. We need to prepare well, we’ve got 8 days to do so.

When you arrived, could you have imagined to have had a season like this?
It was difficult to fix this type of objective. They had a good season last year but lots of people left, some late arrivals. It was difficult to say we want this or that. We will continue with our philosophy of taking it day by day.

You follow the likes of Baratelli, Jouve, Guillou etc.
Yes, that was really something. At the start of my playing career, I played against them in a friendly, I was 19 and I remember it was called the “Coupe des Alpes". We looked at them in admiration, they were some great players. To follow in their footsteps, that’s nice. Now we need to continue and maintain stability over several seasons, that will not be easy.

The chance to play in the Champions League, how does that sound?
Who doesn’t want to play in it? This competition has something the others don’t. For the moment we don’t know if we will have to pass by the preliminary rounds or not. But of course, these are things to think about. 3rd place is delicate, but to go forward, you need to take the positives. For now, we will focus on our next five games.

Have you celebrated this podium finish?
A small beer in the dressing room to celebrate the win but that’s all for the moment (laughs).

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