The former Arsenal youngster is overseeing a renaissance after a dozen squad changes, mergers, liquidations, stadium changes and relegations.
The Coupe de France is used to generating extravagant scenarios. From long-distance team trips to remote regions to finals involving fourth-division teams, the world’s biggest domestic cup never runs out of improbable encounters.
And while Sunday’s 16th match between fourth-division Racing Club de France and first-division Lille looks at first glance like another one of those games, this game is one of the cup’s biggest rivalries. The Parisian team’s cup victories in 1945 and 1949 saw them beat Les Dogues in either final, with Lille winning the trophy three times in a row in between. This weekend, the two clubs meet again after 75 years of very different fortunes.
Racing was one of the founders of the French professional league in 1932 and has five Coupe de France titles under its belt, the first in a domestic double in 1936. Since the glory days of mid-century, however, he’s noticed a dozen call-ups. adjustments, as well as mergers, liquidations, stadium moves, and relegations to the depths of amateur football.
A resurgence in the 1980s as Matra Racing, funded through businessman Jean-Luc Lagardère and featuring players such as David Ginola and Enzo Francescoli, would end in chaos with the investor’s withdrawal at the end of the decade. His run to France Ultimate’s 1990 Coupe would serve as a swan song before the team slipped back into the obscurity of the lower leagues over the next 30 years.
Today, after many monetary difficulties at the turn of the century, the now-independent football subsidiary of France’s oldest multi-sport club (founded in 1882) is cautiously recovering.
Racing has been coached since 2019 through Guillaume Norbert, a former Arsenal youth team player, who went on to play for Lorient, Angers and Nantes. His father Patrick, a former actor and film producer, had assumed the presidency last year. , after having been in charge of Angers.
Under his leadership, Racing climbed to fourth in Nacional 2 in 2022, having narrowly missed out on the last two Covid-shortened campaigns. After a poor start to the season, back-to-back wins have brought them back into the standings. They are looking for promotion to the 3rd division, having finished second in their group last season.
The coach described the atmosphere at Ciel et Blanc as “exciting”, at the thought of playing with a normal starter in a European competition, but even more so at the thought of qualifying for the knockout stages. The 43-year-old jokingly dismisses the perception that preparations for the game have kept him busier than usual, noting that he runs a corporate structure once training is over in the morning – “every week is busy, you know?”
The long-term plan, Norbert explains, is to regain the club’s professional status: “In the beginning, the first team trained in the afternoons 3 times a week, because all the players had a task on the pitch, today very few do it and we have sessions every morning. We have been assigned a physiotherapist, a goalkeeper coach and new sponsors. I feel like we’re on the right track.
The club’s strong track record of progression is a major source of pride: William Gallas and Louis Saha are notable alumni. Emerging customers are temporarily picked up through neighbouring clubs that have their own academy, unlike Racing. The club’s reputation as a prolific progression club remains, however, and its organizations compete in each organization’s most sensible regional department by age, an impressive achievement at the semi-professional level.
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Despite its renewed ambition, Racing continues to face logistical headaches. Sunday’s cup fit is, nominally, a home fit. However, the Yves-du-Manoir stadium in the western suburb of Colombes is being renovated this season to host this summer’s Olympic hockey tournament. The Municipal Stadium, which also hosted the 1924 Games on occasion, is the team’s historic stadium, to which it finally returned in 2012 after jumping from one neighborhood to another after several mergers.
This season, the first team mostly plays their league matches in nearby Boulogne-Billancourt instead. More stringent stadium regulations for cup fixtures and two weeks’ notice had left the club scrambling to find a venue for the Lille game. With no options in the capital, Racing head to Chambly, just beyond the Paris region’s borders – the very team they beat with a stoppage-time winner in the previous round.
Next year will be the end of the changes to the stadium, as the club will finally land on a solid footing and settle permanently in Yves-du-Manoir. As Norbert points out, the renovated facilities will provide a more powerful foundation on which to expand the first team and strengthen the progression efforts of the club’s youngsters.
While the national-scale attention that comes with facing Ligue 1 opposition is likely to be fleeting, the high-profile tie serves as an early indicator that the club is moving in the right direction. With the prospect of French football’s third tier turning fully professional on the horizon, Racing may have the opportunity of finally securing long-term stability after decades of turmoil. But for now, the focus is on Lille.