FC Grenoble Rugby has decided to appoint Fabien Gengenbacher as Sports Manager of the professional team. This mission will start in July 2021.
Fabien Gengenbacher, in collaboration with Franck Corrihons, the Managing Director David Dussert and the President of the Club Nicolas Cuynat will work together to set up a complementary staff that we will announce at the beginning of next year.
In order not to hinder the work of the coaches in place, but also to allow him to finish correctly his mission within the Mare Nostrum Group which employs him today, Fabien will not answer to any interview before taking up his functions.
For Nicolas Cuynat, Chairman of the FCG's Executive Board, this appointment is part of a desire to strengthen the Club's technical support, particularly in terms of management, while keeping the "Red & Blue" DNA.
"The arrival of Fabien Gengenbacher is part of a global approach that we are currently working on the composition of a professional technical and complementary staff for the coming seasons. It seemed essential to us to bring a notion of general management linked to the collective and individual performance of the players. It was also essential to preserve our Club identity while providing the ability to manage and innovate. Fabien fulfills these conditions perfectly and I am particularly happy that he has accepted this challenge and that he is returning fully to the Club that is his home. Fabien will have a cross-functional mission with the objective of strengthening our performance plateau from U21 to professionals.
We wanted to appoint as soon as possible the next manager of the club because it was necessary to respect the work of the current staff while having visibility on the future. In addition, contract renewals, as well as new signatures, are made earlier and earlier and it was essential that the manager could be associated with the management team of the Club in the constitution of the team for the next season.
I would like to take this opportunity to thank Stéphane Glas, with whom we agreed that he would not prolong the FCG adventure. Stéphane has always given his all for the Club in a spirit of openness and sharing. I have no doubt about his involvement until the end of the season and his willingness to seek qualification for the finals with our team.
Concerning the composition of the staff which will accompany Fabien in his mission we are in the process of discussing with the coaches in place and we will come back to you at the beginning of the year 2021 to give you the precise outlines of this framework.".
Nicolas Cuynat, Chairman of the Executive Board of FC Grenoble Rugby
For Fabien, Gégeo for the Red & Blue fans, this challenge was not a career plan, but it resonates as a matter of course.
"At the end of my career as a professional rugby player, I needed to cut with the rugby world. I needed to confront myself with something else, start from scratch. I had the opportunity to join the Mare Nostrum group with the desire to apply in the corporate world all the skills I had acquired during my playing career and also through the academy I had attended at Grenoble École de Management. At the same time, I continued to train myself in coaching, in the management of people, in order to have additional keys to help them grow. Today, I have reached a point in my career where I felt the need to reconnect with a world that is naturally close to me. In all sincerity, this is not something I had planned in my career plan, I have no desire to become a sports manager in a club other than the one I love. The opportunity with the FCG is a unique opportunity for me to apply my playing and management principles.
I played 11 years in this club, I unfortunately left it with a Prod2 downhill... To be able to participate in its recovery or to stabilize it at the level that should be its is a challenge that reasons in me. The FCG is part of me. I understand that the club's environment may have questions about the fact that I have never trained or managed a rugby-professional team, but that is also why we will work to build a complementary staff that will have this technical competence around me. Obviously I have an appetite for the sport, ideas about the game and a vision of the path we need to take.
If I have accepted this mission it is also because I am completely in line with the Club's project. To put academy at the center of our challenges, to improve the technical transversality between the Association,
the academy and the pros, innovating in the relationship we have with the player's performance, recreating a bond, making the players grow, these are the challenges I'm looking forward to meet. "
Auteur : FCG Rugby