OL president Jean-Michel Aulas has said he will announce a decision as to the future of coach Bruno Genesio – whose contract is up at the end of the current season – in early April.
Speculation has been ongoing for much of Bruno Genesio’s tenure at the helm of Olympique Lyonnais since he stepped up from his role as assistant coach when Hubert Fournier was sacked in December 2015. At the end of that season, he signed a three-year deal that comes to term this June, but Aulas has only just announced when he will decide whether to offer Genesio a new contract – and it’s right after their crunch COupe de France semi-final against Rennes.
Crunch time
“It will be 2 April,” announced the OL president, who has seen his coach engineer victory over Paris Saint-Germain – the capital club’s only league defeat so far this season – as well as an away win against Manchester City and a scoreless home draw against Barcelona in the UEFA Champions League this season. “The 31st of March is a Sunday. On 1 April, we will have a directors’ meeting and on 2 April, we will be able to tell you what we have decided with Bruno Genesio.”
Doubts about Genesio among Lyon’s supporter base came to a head recently when key fan group Les Bad Gones released a communiqué calling for Genesio’s departure, but Aulas, ever the king of his domain, ruled out any external influence on his decision.
‘Governance is a question for the directors’
“As we will be having a meeting on this very subject next week, it’s perhaps not that useful to take notice of this demand – especially as the fans have taken the step of talking directly to the media before the meeting has even been held,” said Aulas, whose presidency has taken the club from the lower reaches of Domino’s Ligue 2 in 1987 to a run of seven consecutive Ligue 1 Conforama titles (2002-08) and a UEFA Champions League semi-final (2009-10).
“We are talking about a club that is among the most important in Europe and it’s not the fans who decide how it is to be governed. I’m surprised, as we have always been able to communicate openly with each other. Will it influence our choice? Not at all. I asked them if they wanted to have some input in to the criteria, but that’s it. The club’s governance is a question for the directors, who invest a lot of their money, passion and time. Decisions will be made the same way they been for the last 32 years at OL.”
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