Yannick Cahuzac’s interim spell in charge of Lens began with a 2-1 defeat away to Monaco on Friday night, three days after he was named interim manager. He took his place in the dugout at the Stade Louis II alone, leaning forward on a seat that Dino Toppmöller would have occupied had events not moved so quickly last week.
Cahuzac’s route back to Lens was a short one. He left Lorient, where he had been Olivier Pantaloni’s assistant, at the end of last season and returned to the club where he had finished his playing career and where he had worked as Franck Haise’s assistant during the 2022-23 campaign. He had been spoken about as a future No 1, but that was not the job he took in the summer: still an apprentice without his coaching qualifications, he came back as an assistant to Toppmöller.
That assistant was handed the unenviable task of succeeding Pierre Sage, who had departed hastily for Crystal Palace after guiding Lens to a maiden Coupe de France triumph and a second-place finish in Ligue 1 last season. Nobody at the club was expecting a repeat. Speaking in the summer, sporting director Jean-Louis Leca said Lens were “not a Champions League club” and that an eighth-place finish in Ligue 1 would represent success. By that measure, Toppmöller’s opening weeks were more than satisfactory: his first game brought silverware with a Trophée des Champions win over PSG, his first Ligue 1 match a resounding 5-2 victory over Auxerre, and his side then took all three points away to Slavia Prague in their first Champions League fixture.
Results dipped in recent weeks, but expectations were still being met. That is what made last week’s announcement so jarring: Toppmöller left the club by mutual consent having taken charge of just six games, making him Lens’ shortest-serving manager since the second world war. Explaining the split, the club’s CEO, Benjamin Parrot, pointed not to a rift between the coach and his squad but to one inside the staff itself. “Even before the Trophée des Champions, we felt, within the staff, that there was a French group and then a more international group,” he said. Toppmöller had brought two assistants with him, and when Lens tried to dismiss one of them, Nelson Morgado, the manager refused to accept it and stayed loyal to his colleague. He left, and Cahuzac stepped up in his place.
Cahuzac had been touted as Toppmöller’s eventual successor before he had even settled at the club, an environment that can hardly have helped the German. Lens’ sporting director, Leca, is a close friend and former Bastia teammate of Cahuzac, and he is aware of how the arrangement looks. “Yes, he is my friend, but inside these walls he isn’t my friend. Inside these walls, I am his line manager,” Leca said. To frame the appointment as straightforward nepotism would be unfair: Lorient were one of the most tactically interesting sides in Ligue 1 last season, and though Pantaloni drew most of the plaudits and was nominated for the manager of the season award, Cahuzac played a key role. He also knows Lens intimately, having spent three seasons there as a player and worked under Haise.
His first match in charge did not begin well. Monaco led 1-0 at half-time and had the ball in the Lens net on three occasions, each time denied by the assistant referee’s flag. Cahuzac changed tactics at the interval and the adjustment helped, Matthieu Udol heading in a deserved equaliser. Franjo Ivanovic and Thorgan Hazard both had chances as Lens pushed for a winner, but the game’s final goal went the other way, Jonathan Gradit turning it into his own net. So the Cahuzac era opened with a valiant 2-1 defeat. The 41-year-old, a pitbull of a player in his day, was almost inert in the dugout, standing like a statue with his hand on his chin in a pensive pose that exuded a studious serenity — perhaps no bad thing for a club that needs calm after the week it has just had.
Elsewhere in Ligue 1, there was an unhappy reunion for Liam Rosenior, who led Paris FC to a 2-1 win over Strasbourg, the club he left in January to join sister club Chelsea. Rosenior celebrated in front of the travelling Strasbourg supporters, which he described as a response to insulting chants about his family from the away end, and an unsavoury confrontation between both sets of players and staff followed. Rosenior said the chants had gone “too far” and that “celebrating like that was clearly a message.” PSG beat Marseille 2-1 in a Classique that encapsulated both clubs’ seasons so far, with Ferran Torres coming off the bench to score the opener and Angel Gomes equalising for a Marseille side that has now lost four of its first five league matches and sits in the relegation zone during the international break. Lyon made a statement with a 4-0 win over Rennes, a match briefly suspended after home fans unfurled an insulting banner aimed at Saint-Étienne. At the top, Monaco lead the table on 13 points, ahead of Lyon and Paris FC on 11 and Lille and Rennes on 10. Lens sit 15th on four points.