Jean-Marc Furlan's neurodegenerative disease revealed by his wife in a book

Cécile Traverse Furlan has chosen to make public the neurodegenerative disease suffered by her husband Jean-Marc Furlan, former emblematic manager of Troyes, Strasbourg, Brest, Auxerre and Caen, in a book titled Jean-Marc Furlan, le don d’une vie, published in recent days. The 68-year-old coach, a record holder with five promotions from Ligue 2 to Ligue 1, is seeing the disease gradually steal his speech and memory.

“I understood that I preferred to live uncomfortably with the truth rather than be in the discomfort of everything that could be said about him and which was completely wrong,” explains his wife, a sports psychology consultant.

It was while Furlan was managing Auxerre that Cécile Traverse Furlan perceived the first warning signs. She noticed unusual “bursts of aggression” in her husband, despite his reputation for a volcanic temperament. Her concerns were dismissed by those around the club. “If you had known him as a player, you would understand,” she was told. But after twenty years of life together, she sensed that something had changed in the very nature of these outbursts.

She describes the difference with precision: formerly, when Furlan came home after an outburst, “he was confused, embarrassed, he was ashamed of what he had done and the next day he apologized.” Then, insidiously, his relationship with anger transformed. “All of a sudden, the man I loved would leave the house with almost the intention of having a fit of anger at someone. It was almost deliberate.”

For a long time, she attributed these episodes to the pressure inherent in professional football. “It’s very difficult to date. In fact it starts with small bursts of aggression that explode,” she confides. Jean-Marc Furlan held his last managerial position at Caen, where he left his post in November 2023.