Jean-Louis Gasset, passionate coach with a big heart, dies aged 72 | OneFootball

Jean-Louis Gasset has died in his sleep the day after Christmas, aged 72. According to L'Équipe, the former Paris Saint-Germain and France assistant later flourished as head coach at Saint-Étienne.

He had marked his 72nd birthday on 9 December at home, surrounded by friends from La Paillade, the Montpellier club founded by his father Bernard and Louis Nicollin. Between well-wishers’ calls, he would pause to answer the door, then ring back with a smile.

Unable to stay away from the game he loved, he returned for late stints at Marseille in 2024 and Montpellier in 2024-2025, then analysed matches on Ligue 1+ this season. Embracing the media from 2017, he arrived at AS Saint-Étienne to play the firefighter role and finally excelled as a number one at 64.

His coaching life began in Montpellier in the 1990s. He earned his stripes as Luis Fernandez’s assistant, joining PSG in 2001 thanks to Pierre Alonzo, then moving to Espanyol in 2003-2004.

A brief tandem with Xavier Gravelaine at Istres ended after relegation. In 2007 Laurent Blanc enlisted him at Bordeaux, where Blanc managed matches and Gasset handled the rest, his precise sessions and tactical clarity winning over players.

Frustrated by limited means and wishing to be closer to his mother, he moved on, returning to Bordeaux, then working at Marseille and Montpellier. Out of loyalty to the Nicollin family he accepted a near impossible mission in October 2024, preferring to try to save La Paillade rather than watch it sink.

Named Côte d'Ivoire coach in May 2022, leading a national team was a long-held wish. After his 2021 Bordeaux exit he planned squads with magnets on his fridge. Eight months in he resigned as elimination loomed at AFCON 2023, and the Elephants later won the title without him, also a little for him.

Quiet and self-effacing, Gasset shunned the spotlight. He leaves a legacy among the great servants of French football, linked forever to his father and Louis Nicollin.

Source: L'Équipe