Not for the first week Albert Riera’s analysis of the game had fallen short of the result and raised the hackles of his opposite number. His FC Girondins de Bordeaux side had lost 2-1 away to AS Saint-Étienne, in a bizarre match where Riera had been accused of slapping an ASSE player .
For Riera, his charges had been far “ better ” than the team 11 points and 11 places above them in the league, and he wanted the press that gathered to know, “ You can write that in bold .” The ASSE manager, Olivier Dall’Oglio was the latest to hear about how his side had been far inferior, and was evidently fed up with the sentiment, “ Everyone analyses their match as they want. We didn’t see the same match, but that’s not a problem, I’m not wasting my time on that. ”
It has become a rite of passage for Bordeaux to arrive on the weekend with a new jab ready for their opposition manager. Riera has clashed with Régis Brouard (former SC Bastia manager), Omar Daf (Amiens SC), and even Ahmed Kantari (Valenciennes FC). In each case, Riera has come across to the rest of the league as arrogant, and keen to settle old scores.
A look that does not hold much value when his team are 14th in Ligue 2 and six points away from the relegation zone. Bordeaux have only spent three seasons outside the top division, and last season’s third-place finish was supposed to be the club’s nadir, a record that will certainly be broken by the Spaniard this season with the club lingering near the bottom of the pile on course for their worst ever campaign.
After beating Valenciennes (the bottom side in the league), Riera declared that his side were not them, “ We have the quality to make more than four passes in a row .” While, when Brouard was sacked earlier in
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