Julien Stéphan had been enjoying his break from football for about two months when his wife’s patience finally gave in. “She said to me: ‘I hope you will manage again quickly – and very quickly – because I want to see you on the pitch and to see you back in your own environment,’” says the new Queens Park Rangers manager.
Stéphan left Rennes for the second time last November and estimates that as well as spending precious time with his two children he watched 20 to 25 games a week as he waited for his next opportunity. That finally arrived last month when the Frenchman took over at Loftus Road from Martí Cifuentes, who has since joined Leicester. But the chance to take a breather after six years as a manager during which he guided Rennes to the Champions League for the first time and led Strasbourg to sixth in Ligue 1 – their highest position since 1980 – was most welcome.
“You need to take time for you and your family,” Stéphan says. “It’s important. But also you need to take time to watch different things, to analyse the game and different games in different leagues and analyse also what you did before and what you want to do after. It’s important to start to imagine how you can see the future.”
QPR supporters will be hoping that, after a decade largely marooned in the bottom half of the Championship, the club can bring back some glory days under Stéphan. The 44-year-old has heard the stories about QPR being London’s best team during the first Premier League season, when a side with Les Ferdinand as their star striker finished fifth in 1993. But Stéphan insists they must live in the present to have a chance of escaping what he describes as “probably the most difficult league in the world”.
“I know the history of QPR, but now we are in a different period,” he says. “It’s important to remember and to know the history, but it’s also important to live in the present and to build for the future. There is work to do with everybody, with the players, of course, with the management, with the CEO, with the owners, and also with the legends of the club. It’s the responsibility of everybody.”
Stéphan adds: “We know the expectations from the fans – we need to give everything on the pitch, and we need also to create a strong identity. It’s very important, and after that it’s football. Sometimes you win, sometimes you lose, but you need to give everything.”
Stéphan has been so busy since being appointed that he has not had time to move into his new flat near QPR’s home ground, let alone explore Shepherd’s Bush and the surrounding area. “Only work, work, work and work,” he says. “Just hotel and training ground and training sessions …”
Stéphan is speaking from a pre-season camp in Girona that has allowed him and his staff, who include the former West Ham, Charlton and France midfielder Alou Diarra as an assistant, to get to know their players before their gruelling Championship season kicks off on 9 August. “It’s the beginning of the process and we need to build step by step all the ideas, the collective ideas and also the relationship between the players and the staff,” he says.
Stéphan spent time as a player in Paris Saint-Germain’s academy but never made a top-flight appearance for his various clubs before he retired at 27 to concentrate on coaching. By then he had taken charge of Rennes’ under-19s for three years and been to university to study Staps (Sciences and techniques of physical and sports activities), the route usually taken by French people who want to become sports teachers.
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“I just wanted to learn something that could help me with the ideas that I had about development,” says Stéphan, whose father, Guy Stéphan, was assistant to Didier Deschamps for France’s World Cup triumph in 2018 and has managed Senegal. “I didn’t choose this job at the beginning to do the same thing as my father but because I wanted to work with young players. And to be honest, at the beginning, I thought that I could do that all my career with the young players. And it was just after 12 or 15 years that I imagined the future differently. Of course, we speak together and he can give me some advice sometimes, but I also need to live my own experience.”
The Rennes academy’s fabled production line in recent years includes Ousmane Dembélé, Eduardo Camavinga, Jérémy Doku and Desiré Doué – all of whom played under Stéphan, either for the youth sides or the first team, with whom he had two spells as manager, initially as an interim in 2018. He led Rennes to their first trophy for almost 50 years when they beat PSG in the French Cup final a few months later. He knows QPR will find it hard to replicate that kind of production line given that they are competing with so many London clubs for the best talent, but Stéphan thinks there is one advantage they may have.
“A strong point that we can say to families [of young players] is that it’s probably easier at 18 or 19 years old to play in the Championship than in the Premier League,” he says. “And the development of the player can also pass this way. So, yes, play in the Championship. After that, for the best of them, perhaps play in the Premier League. So we can develop this kind of thinking with the family.
“But it’s difficult to compare the young players of the academy at QPR with these kinds of players: Ousmane Dembélé, Eduardo Camavinga, Desiré Doué. They’re top, top, top, top, top players. Most important is to create the opportunity for the best of them in the academy to have the possibility to train with the professionals and for the best of them also to play in the first team.”
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