Ménès reveals how L'Équipe sanctioned him for defending Jacquet in 1998

Pierre Ménès used Robert Pirès’ testimonial match, held Tuesday evening in Metz, to shed light on an obscure chapter of the 1998 World Cup preparation: his sidelining within L’Équipe’s newsroom for having supported Aimé Jacquet when the newspaper was making his life difficult.

The testimonial had brought together several 1998 World Cup winners — Thierry Henry, Bixente Lizarazu, Marcel Desailly, Laurent Blanc, Youri Djorkaeff and Patrick Vieira — as well as Aimé Jacquet himself, 84, spotted the day before at Stade de France during France’s victory over Belgium (4-1) under Zinédine Zidane. Seeing the former manager in good form apparently loosened the tongue of the ex-Canal+ pundit. “I’d heard he wasn’t in great shape. I found him very well, very sharp, that’s pleasing,” he confided on YouTube.

Ménès then described an editorial meeting bringing together around a hundred people — journalists, photographers — where he had tried to defend France’s chances. “I asked a question: we have the best goalkeeper in the world, the best defence in the world, the best player in the world, an easy first round… there’s still a real probability that things will go rather well.” The response was scathing: “Shut up, you don’t know anything, Jacquet is useless!”

This stance had cost him his place in the tournament’s coverage, before an unexpected turn of events. “Because there had been chaos with the six players left out of the squad, and I had great relationships with the players, they sent me in as a firefighter on the day of the opening match Brazil-Scotland,” he recounts. Jacquet, for his part, had not forgotten. “He must have heard that I was absolutely not against him. He always showed me a form of gratitude,” Ménès concludes, not without a hint of satisfaction: “In the end, I wasn’t far from the truth.”