Pushed out of L'Équipe du Soir, Micoud relaunches his consulting career on Ligue 1+

Johan Micoud made his debut as a consultant on Ligue 1+ on Saturday during the match between Strasbourg and Lens at the Meinau, counting for matchday 2 of Ligue 1. The former international midfielder had been sidelined last summer from L’Équipe du Soir, as the L’Équipe channel decided to reduce its panel from seven to four consultants.

Micoud is far from the only one to have suffered from this restructuring. Raymond Domenech, Jérôme Alonzo, Régis Brouard, Eric Blanc, Guillaume Dufy, Hervé Penot, Bernard Lions, Grégory Schneider, Philippe Sanfourche, Dominique Séverac, Sébastien Tarrago and Régis Testelin were also dismissed, without necessarily being offered another role within the sports channel.

It was the human dimension of the project that convinced Micoud to join Ligue 1+. “What I love are human adventures. I’ve already had the chance to work with Marc Las and Jérôme Cazadieu who came looking for me. They are people with a human side. That’s what swayed me on this new project,” he said.

The former Bordeaux player especially claims a freedom of speech that he feels he sometimes lacked. “I wanted to have freedom of expression. We will defend Ligue 1 and try to do it as best we can based on what we see. It won’t be fake because there really is quality. But if we see something we don’t like, we’ll have the ability to say it with arguments. They know me a bit and know very well that I’m not going to speak in platitudes. If Ligue 1+ came looking for me, it’s because they want sincere analysis.”

Aware that he sometimes divided opinion on the L’Équipe channel, Micoud nonetheless tempers his image as a divisive consultant. “I don’t know if I’m more critical. I give my opinion based on what I feel. When I like something, I say that too. But it stands out more when you say things people don’t like. I saw PSG’s evolution toward attractive football and I was the first to congratulate both Paris and Luis Enrique.”