|
'The house of French soccer'
Host's camp is castle others can only dream about
Posted: Sunday July 05, 1998 11:40 PM
| |
French coach Aime Jacquet on the castle: "This is where we feel good" (AP) |
CLAIREFONTAINE, France (AP) --
For the French World Cup hosts, their home is literally their castle. The
team has made a castle their home.
"This is where we feel good," said French coach Aime Jacquet, walking
from the training field to the stone mansion where he and his players have
been living for more than a month.
With tension in the host nation getting higher ahead of Wednesday's
semifinal against Croatia, a
secluded hideaway seems a necessity.
Smack in the middle of the vast Rambouillet forest some 50 kilometers
(30 miles) southwest of the capital, the French squad have found a haven of
peace and quiet where deer still roam free among the green hills and boar
sometimes venture onto the training fields.
A long avenue of rhododendrons, one purple haze until a week ago,
leads straight into the heart of the 58 hectare (145-acre) base. French
great Michel Platini, who has the chief training pitch named after him,
simply calls it "the house of French soccer."
In the bowels of the vast complex, the team doctors have the latest in
sports medical equipment at their disposal and the players go from gym
centers to the massage tables to their personalized rooms all within on
swoop.
In an adjacent building, a vast book and video library has everything
on every potential opponent at the disposal for Jacquet, who had an office
down the hall.
It even has its own computer center that tracks the performances of
every French player and opponents, a vital tool in preparing tactical
plans.
"We should be so lucky to have all this at our disposal," said
Jacquet. "We're in a great facility."
Although World Cup lodgings for visiting teams have come a long way
over the past dozen years, when some teams still shared hotels in noisy
environments, a cozy base like this is a definite advantage.
Little wonder France wanted to win its first round. Victory assured
the team that the last three would be played in Saint-Denis, if it plays
the final, or Saint-Denis and Paris, if it loses the semifinal. The two
stadiums are an easy commute from Clairefontaine.
Over the weekend, some players went mountain biking into the hills,
others went running at ease through the woods to recover from Friday's
exhausting quarterfinal win over Italy.
"In Clairefontaine, we find the time to get all our forces back," said
Jacquet.
The training center has nine soccer fields and can lodge over 400
people. Most of the time, France's finest youngsters converge on
Clairefontaine for special sessions and when the soccer players were out of
town for a first-round game, Alain Prost's Formula One team came over to
prepare for the French Grand Prix.
Direct contact with the public is lacking though. Training sessions
are closed to the general public and, just ahead of the games, to
journalists, too.
When Brazilians or Nigerians were
signing autographs for flocks of fans after training, the only contact the
French have are with properly accredited media. It is a rare day when a fan
stands outside the gate.
The French soccer federation bought the chateau from international
banker Andre Lazard in 1982 and has used proceeds from several World Cup
campaigns to renovate the center.
Now it could house the first French world champion.
Copyright 2003 Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
| 
