At what point will a team’s over-achievement stop being called a surprise?

It’s a fair question when you consider that with René Girard as coach, Montpellier have confounded expectations of the club for the last three years.

In Girard’s first season in charge in 2009-10, they finished fifth as a newly-promoted side; at this stage last season, Montpellier were only four points off second place before a spring slump dropped them to 14th place; this season, they have only been out of the top three for single week.

Last weekend’s win over Brest kept them in second, three points behind leaders Paris Saint-German and, significantly, seven points ahead of Lille and Lyon in joint-third.

So much for fears that they would struggle in January, given that three of their players—Souleymane Camara (Senegal), Abdelhamid El Kaoutari and Younes Belhanda (both Morocco)—were on African Cup of Nations duty.
Montpellier won five-out-of-five and are yet to concede a goal in 2012.

The club’s rise comes at a time when the future of France coach Laurent Blanc is uncertain. Blanc wants a new deal before Euro 2012. However the French football federation, mindful of the issues it had with Raymond Domenech, who got a new deal before Euro 2008 and stuck it out until the fiasco of the 2010 World Cup, want to wait until after the summer tournament. France Football reported this week that Blanc is weighing up offers from elsewhere and may pull a surprise similar to Jacques Santini’s, who announced one week before Euro 2004 that he was to join Tottenham Hotspur (it did not end
well: for France, Spurs or Santini).

Last Sunday, Le Journal du Dimanche claimed that Arsene Wenger was on a federation short-list should Blanc leave in the summer. Le Monde has already reported Paul Le Guen would be considered if the France job became vacant. On Tuesday, France Football added two more names to the list:
Rudi Garcia, coach of champions Lille, and Girard, whose work at Montpellier—not to mention the four years he spent as France Under-21 coach—have put him in the running as well.

Girard is a former France international who was part of the 1982 World Cup squad that lost to West Germany in the semifinal. He won three league titles with Bordeaux playing alongside Domenech and Gernot Rohr (now Gabon coach), and was inspired by Johan Neeskens. “People remember me as a hard man, which is fine, but I was a midfielder who scored fifty goals in my career, and not just any old goals, but volleys and bicycle-kicks too,” he told So Foot this month.

As a teenager, Girard tiled roofs with his brother and would make him play football, even though he never liked it, during every tea-break. He began and ended his career at Nimes, and was even the subject of a testimonial match there attended by Neeskens himself. But after three difficult years coaching Nimes in the early-1990s, he quit coaching for a year and ran a newsagent’s shop, working six-and-a-half days a week. As he put it: “I needed to be occupied and I’d rather die in the middle of doing something than sitting in my armchair.”

Girard was part of French coach Aime Jacquet’s backroom staff when France won the 1998 World Cup and, under Roger Lemerre, when they won Euro 2000 and flopped in Korea in 2002. He coached France’s Under-16s, Under-19s and Under-21s. The latter was a stepping-stone to the France job for Raymond Domenech, but it did not turn out that way for Girard, whose side won three Toulon tournaments and reached the semi-finals of the 2006 European Championships.

“When I was with the French federation, I discovered there were some people, like Gerard Houllier [who was head of DTN, a technical director role encompassing all national teams], who are good at manipulating people using diplomacy. Houllier wanted Erick Mombaerts in my position, and there was a putsch to get me out.”

Girard was not happy with the decision and demanded an explanation from Domenech, who was at that time in charge of the senior team. “It’s not me, it’s Houllier’s call,” he said. Girard then approached federation president Jean-Pierre Escalettes, who told him it was because of the play-off failure against Germany in qualifying for the 2009 tournament (which in retrospect seems pretty harsh, given that Germany comfortably won the tournament and used six players that reached the World Cup semi-final twelve-months later).

“I’ve made mistakes in my past and sometimes gone too far, but if I think you’re bad news or that you’re a hypocrite I’m not going to say you’re a nice guy,” Girard added. “So when Houllier fucked me over, I told him to go fuck himself. And I walked out.”

You might have thought that such a response would immediately rule out Girard’s chances of ever returning to the Federation. But things have changed there now: Escalettes and Houllier have gone, and new president Noel Le Graet, as he is proving by digging in his heels over Blanc’s contract, has taken different approach.

Last week, Girard joked that Montpellier’s points total should finally see them safe from the threat of relegation. In reality, avoiding defeat to Paris Saint-Germain in ten days’ time will strengthen their case as a genuine top-three side, which would leave only one Champions League place left for Lyon, Lille and Marseille. Montpellier’s rise could leave two of those sides with a bloody nose and Girard with a chance of avenging his ‘Houllier moment’.