Montpellier fans confront players amid crisis | OneFootball

With just four points from their first nine games, Montpellier HSC sit rock bottom of the table in Ligue 1 and amid the ongoing crisis, which has already cost Michel Der Zakarian his job, fans turned up at the club’s training centre to make their voices heard.

In financial difficulty, Montpellier struggled during the summer transfer window. Failing to offload any players meant that they couldn’t strengthen and that has shown at the start of the season. They have just one win and have conceded 29 goals already. Following a 5-0 defeat to Olympique de Marseille a fortnight ago, Der Zakarian lost his job.

He has since been replaced by the returning Jean-Louis Gasset, who has come out of retirement to help save the club. His tenure got off to a losing start as La Paillade lost 3-0 to Toulouse FC.

Fans are now making their voices heard. They turned up at the training centre on Wednesday to give the squad a dressing down. “You know why we’re here this morning? We aren’t here to start a war with you. We don’t want that. For a few years, if we wanted to start a war, we would have done it,” began one of Montpellier’s ultras.

He continued, “We are here, not to talk about the game itself either. You have an international-level manager who is here for that. Okay? We have come to talk about the shirt. You wear the shirt of a club that is celebrating its 50th anniversary. Look at the training centre. Who knows what it’s called? It’s called the Bernard Gasset training centre – it’s the manager’s father. Here, it is family, it’s La Paillade guys, it’s orange and blue. Our blood is orange and blue. You, right now, don’t have that blood. Okay? Respect this shirt. Respect the people who work here every day. If you don’t respect that, we will crumble.”

MHSC’s ultras went on to ask for more effort from the current squad. “You’re the players, you have the power on the pitch. We can lose matches, we don’t have a mad squad. We know that but it is the way you go about it, la grinta. You sweat for the jersey.”

GFFN | Luke Entwistle