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- #4,741
Professor Nutmeg
ML Fanatic
- 3 July 2002
An article on Monsieur Aulas.
Nobody can fault Jean-Michel Aulas' intentions, but when it comes to Michael Essien the Lyon President is starting to resemble Jacques Tati's Monsieur Hulot at his bumbling worst.
He is not the first club official to have his feathers ruffled by Chelsea's roughhouse tactics, but few others have treated the occasion as a chance to star in their own personal farce. And his dizzying pirouettes on the whole tiresome saga are threatening to show up the limits to his side's European credentials, credentials he himself did so much to build up over a long period of time.
Gone now is the image of strong leadership and unwavering vision that turned Lyon into France's first dynasty since Marseille and Champions' League regulars. The English press want to know what he thinks and his synapses seem to be in overdrive as he counts down his 15 minutes of fame. What we are left with is a man with an unquenchable thirst to share every last change of mind the moment he sees a TV camera, a man who sets bravado deadlines and happily forgets about them like a weak-willed school teacher.
It is conceivable that he made his announcement on Sunday evening that "the doors were closed" on the Essien deal intentionally to flush out Roman Abramovich for one last desperate phone call, but frankly it's unedifying stuff.
Who is he placating? The fans? Perhaps, but I doubt any one of them feels anywhere near as proud of Aulas as he seems to be of himself. "They thought we were just country bumpkins with our berets and a baguette in our pocket. That's not the way it works at Lyon," he raged, and yet increasingly that is the picture he is painting. 'Essien's not going anywhere; actually you can have him for £31m; wait, why not throw in Tiago while you're at it; sorry, too late… oh, I think my phone's ringing.' It may not be beret and baguette territory exactly, but no one will come away from this thinking he is a negotiator to be feared.
The missing chapter in that abbreviated run-down was perhaps Aulas' oddest statement of all - that if Chelsea didn't stump up £31m then Essien would be sold to another team for much less. Surely, the only rational 'point' to his excitable clowning around would be to bravely take the fall for the good of the club, irritating Chelsea into raising their bid as high as possible; perhaps not as high as £31m, but a whole lot higher than anyone else would be prepared to pay for a relatively unproven 22-year-old with an Anelka-esque attitude problem.
Instead, Aulas looks to be taking it all too personally, prepared to sacrifice millions just to wipe the smile off Peter Kenyon's face. A noble ambition some might think, but of course he seems to have retracted that statement as well.
And as for his patriotic bluster that Ligue 1 can't keep losing its stars, he and his fellow Presidents need to admit honestly they are loathe to sell players to their rivals and that they are a part of the problem. Would he prefer Essien joining Monaco, for example? I doubt it. Of course, Aulas is far from being the villain in this piece, but then neither was Monsieur Hulot throughout all his memorable mishaps. Unfortunately, Aulas shares none of Tati's respect for the silent era.
Aulas: Cocknose
