"Don't start referring to me formally and calling me coach!"

Since August, have you changed seats on the French team coach?
No. On the bus, Hervé (Renard) was sitting in the right seat and I kept my seat on the left. The only change I made was at the table, at Clairefontaine. I didn't take his seat but I put myself amongst the players.

On a daily basis, what is the biggest difference between the role of assistant and that of head coach?
Dealing with all the parameters of the role: travel, media relations, working with clubs, interviews with players... An accumulation of things that I didn't have to manage until then. And then there is the decision-making. Although I was proactive and very aligned with the previous head coach, I was not the final decision-maker, which could sometimes lead to frustration.

In twenty years of coaching, this is the first time that you have taken on the role of number 1 in a professional capacity. Is this the expected evolution of your vocation or a new opportunity?
A bit of both at once. Even before the end of my playing career, in 2003, I passed my diplomas and immediately got my hands dirty by taking on the U16 Nationals of OGC Nice. And it was a real pleasure. Like Guy Lacombe in Cannes, I saw training as an opportunity to build solid foundations for myself, but I also knew that at some point, I would have to remove this label of coach as I must do today with that of assistant.
 

"Like any coach, I make mistakes. But to limit any mistakes, the staff must compensate or make me aware. I don't want yes-men assistants"

In the creation and management of your staff, how did your experience as an assistant help you?
It helped me a lot to understand the dynamics of the staff because I had two different experiences: the first with Saudi Arabia, where I had to integrate and adapt to a team already in place and make certain concessions; the second with the French team, during which I offered to relieve Hervé of certain managerial constraints, while preparing myself for the future by positioning myself as "manager" of a team that we chose together. I led technical meetings, I developed training sessions... a similar role to what I am currently experiencing.

What did you learn from this? 

You need to have special moments and a relationship of mutual trust with all the members of the staff! That's how I appointed Fabien Lefèvre, with whom I passed the BEPF, and Stéphane Saillant, whom I met during the coaching diploma course, as head of the U23s. As a coach, I make mistakes. And to limit them, the staff must compensate or make me aware. I don't want yes-men assistants. You need loyalty, frankness, competence, but also differences for greater complementarity. Stéphane, for example, has the coaches intuition, like me, but has been working more on defensive strategies while I am more inclined towards the offensive.

You have also introduced a coach specialising in mental preparation...
Hervé and I had already noticed that there was something to do on a mental level, in particular the idea of ​​working on player confidence. The arrival of coach Thomas Sammut (editor’s note - Stade Brestois, Léon Marchand, Florent Manaudou) is part of this approach. If we look at the facts, we have been eliminated seven times in our last eight quarter-finals. So there is a collective or individual blockage and the more chronic it becomes, the more we talk about it, the more it becomes burdensome. The mental aspect is therefore an axis of development that aims to instil in the group that victory is above all the consequence of what has been put in place.

Under your management, did you want to make your mark or on the contrary ensure continuity from Hervé Renard?
When Hervé was suspended for the England-France (1-2) match, I found myself in a number 1 position on the field, but never in my mind. An assistant must know how to stay in his place. So I behaved as such towards the players and the staff: I stayed in my tracksuit, I took the warm-up. All this to say that the function changes, the way others look at it too, but not the man.

How did you prepare for this handover with the players?
When I was appointed, I went on trips to London, Madrid and Lyon to meet 45 players before the first training camp. I wanted to spend some time with them in order to gauge the impact of the quarter-final defeat at the Olympic Games (0-1 against Brazil), on their mental state, to get to know their thoughts and to prepare them for what they were going to experience with me in terms of demands.

What was the content of your first speech then?
At the first gathering, I led the first meeting alone in order to validate what I had told them face to face. While I listened to them during the individual meetings, this time I mainly talked about myself. It was a way of closing the loop.

Has your relationship with the players changed? Until now, they knew you as the assistant coach…
I am closer to them now because my management is based on authenticity. I told them: "if you called me Laurent and addressed me informally when I was an assistant, above all, don't start addressing me formally and calling me coach, because I remain the same. The most important thing is respect. If I ask you something, you do it, if you ask me something I try to meet your expectations".
 

“Subliminally recall good memories to put the players in the best mood to focus” 

It is often said that the first training session sets the tone... Did you prepare anything in particular in order to leave your mark on it?
During my seventeen months as assistant, I noticed that the players had enjoyed three or four tactical sessions in which I had intervened a lot. So I decided to reproduce them during the first training course more repeatedly and for longer in order to: 1- make them aware of a varied tactical approach with the learning of the 3-4-3 system in addition to the 4-3-3; and 2- give psychological feedback and subliminally remind them of good memories in order to put them in the best possible mood to focus.
 

Being the number 1 also means having to deal with stress and emotional management. How can you be equipped in this area when you have never been on the front line?
I am not the same coach today as I was when I started. Don't think that training is not synonymous with competition. When, with PSG, you play the Al Kass Cup in Doha with the Rabiot, Maignan and Coman generation, the stakes are high. When you coach the OGC Nice reserve team in National 2 for four years and you fight every season to stay up, there is also a lot at stake and huge pressure.

From Pablo Correa to Carlo Ancelotti

Since the beginning of his coaching career at Nice in 2003, Laurent Bonadei has worked alongside many inspiring coaches. "From the beginning, I had access to Gernot Rohr's dressing room, which allowed me to attend his talks. Then I saw from the inside how Frédéric Antonetti worked, before discovering Pablo Correa's at Nancy, which was very interesting. He had chosen a different path to mine. At 40, he already had a lot of experience and had led ASNL to the European Cup! Pablo talked a lot with the team. On match nights, he gave us access to the changing room and came to debrief the match with us while it was still fresh, it was very enriching." At Paris St-Germain, with the U17s and then the U19s, the Marseille born coach was able to appreciate up close the work of Jean-Louis Gasset, Laurent Blanc and Carlo Ancellotti, before great discussions with Claude Puel, Lucien Favre and Patrick Vieira... It's worth all the lessons on the benches of the training centres."
 

Renard-Bonadei, the competitor and the trainer

After a short experience in Angola in 2010, Laurent Bonadei joined his friend of thirty years, Hervé Renard, in Saudi Arabia in 2019. The start of five years of collaboration between two complementary caoches, but "with a slightly different vision: Throughout my career, I am more of a coach, so for example I am less apprehensive about making changes because in training, progress comes before the result. Hervé, for his part, has always been focused on the competition and makes his choices above all to win. He has brought me a lot and I think that in the position I occupy today, he is the one, for now, that has a clearer perspective than me".