What will be the first projects offered to Gilles Moretton knowing that the realities have been completely shaken up by the health context?
By entering into action so late, two months behind the initial date, there is a news that will be very important and immediate: Roland-Garros. That is why, in my opinion, we will meet the day after the election to establish the order of priorities, without forgetting our program. But there is Roland, who will arrive quickly and probably in special conditions. It will be the priority.
We can move towards a scenario like the one of the year last?
What priorities come after the Roland-Garros file?
The situation of our clubs which suffer from Covid – 13. There, we are really in the immediate management of the crisis. When we started our campaign over a year ago, the Covid – 13 did not exist. There are therefore certain priorities to review and manage the difficulties encountered by the clubs are part of it. We will have to make an inventory to see what can be done and with what means at our disposal. We don’t have much in hand today. There was not much communication with those who were in place before us.
As the director of a challenger tournament, what problems arise for small tournaments and small players in this period?
All tournaments are affected by heavy and expensive protocols. Tournament budgets in general are not very stretchy. The money we have, we put into the tournament and there are even thousands of euros to add from one year to the next. It’s very complicated. Fortunately we had the chance to have additional aid from the FFT for the challengers tournaments and also from the ATP. But hey, these aids did not make a profit at the tournaments, far from it. Many tournaments have suffered, and if these aids had not been in place, many tournaments could not have taken place. And I’m not just talking about small tournaments, but also ATP 190 or 500.
What about the small players of the circuit, who struggle more than those who trust the summits?
There are concerns at all levels. Fat people also suffer. Part of the money to organize these tournaments comes from partnerships. And these partnerships can be put in difficulty when a company, two companies which have difficulties and whose priority will stop being to invest in tennis but to refocus on its activity… The economic situation will be complicated as a whole , so we’ll have to see how it goes in the months to come, or even next year. Can the economic model as we know it hold up? Are things going to have to be revised downwards? Everyone will have to make an effort, be it tournaments or players, to be able to continue to have a number of top professional tournaments.
Coming back to Gilles Moretton’s victorious campaign, how did he beat the odds?
By getting closer to the clubs, you want to put the church back in the center of the village?
You cannot not tell me that (laughs). This was the expression used in the previous campaign by the current president. It was his campaign theme, the church in the center of the village. It happened to me to ask the clubs: “this is what he told you three years ago. If you think that your club has been put back at the center of the federation, then don’t change anything ”. It is important that the clubs feel connected to their federation, that they are listened to, that their issues are taken into account. Apparently, the vast majority of clubs in France haven’t had this feeling before. The vote is massive. That gives us a big responsibility, that of being much better in this area.
In addition to proximity to clubs you also claim the reintroduction of the notion of pleasure in the game. Your personal journey has often been set up as a model…
(He cuts) I don’t believe my example. I have seen and been in the business long enough to be able to judge broadly without taking my case as an example. I don’t like when it’s done and besides it has been done several times and it didn’t make me very comfortable. There are things that are sometimes out of the ordinary, but there are no rules or model. Today, they want us to believe that we have to do this at such an age and that it is extremely rigid. And we put too much of a general point of view,
on the high level policy of Giudicelli , we have the impression that the pleasure of the game is opposed to competition and to winning. Whether it’s either one or the other. But no ! This is where we are wrong. We must keep these notions of the game.
Why?
The best in the world, we can see the pleasure they still take on the field while they are at 24 years of career , that they won everything and this stuff, they managed to keep it. I think that in order to have a successful career… We must first remember that it is easier to do Sciences Po Paris than to join the 82 best players in the world. This extremely difficult route, you don’t have to reach it but you have to keep these essential notions.
Today, we see a lot more children who stop completely and put away the racket because at one point we went too far and we disgusted them . It’s a shame because we are depriving ourselves of a category of players who would not have all been pros but who would have been good club players, who would have been negative, 2.6… These are the people who feed our clubs, first teams, 2 teams, team matches. We need everyone and unfortunately we are losing them.
Nothing can be done in the short term. If there is a champion or a junior champion next year, we will not tell you that it is thanks to us, that we have put things in place and that it has borne fruit in a few months. This is false, and this is what was constantly said under the previous mandate, where there was ownership of the results.
Like the Hugo Gaston case at Roland-Garros?
(Laughs) This is a very good example . It was an age category where they put the package under the technical direction of Arnaud Di Pasquale. There, we can talk about the results of that era. But from there to talking about the result of what happened over the past two years … Even a player who is junior today has not been built in two years. It’s a system, it’s been five, six, seven years. We must not fall into this short-term vision. It doesn’t matter at some point if there aren’t some fantastic international results in the young categories.
But it can be an indicator, right?
Yes, sometimes it ‘is interesting. It’s good if we can have them by continuing to progress and work. It is not just a matter of having a result for the result at 10 or 13 years. These are years of construction, not years where you have to go looking for results. Yes, there is learning to compete and to win, but it’s part of a slow and general build. Focusing on short-term results is the biggest mistake in current sports policy.
To stay on the question of the high level, Jo-Wilfried Tsonga affirms recently that “the subject of the Davis Cup is not finished”. Is it possible to go back?
It is with the international federation that we will have to see. Obviously, the French federation has a weight but we must ask questions. We are talking about contracts signed for incredible durations. They say that eventually, there would be possibilities to get out… Nothing is clear. We knew it couldn’t work . When, from the first year, it doesn’t work, you tell yourself that it will be complicated.
We knew, we had told you that it was not good! You have to listen to people and not think of the check that we are going to put in your bank account. We should have thought before about what the Davis Cup was, about its history, about passion. We are doing a lot of miscalculations at the moment. In football it has also been done. It is the lure of immediate gain. But things are being built with people, countries. The story is important, the audience is important… You cannot forget them, put them aside. What sport does that? Which sport forgets its fan base? They are the ones who keep tennis alive.
