“Your wife is good”: OM, Evra and dubious mathematics, the most cult punchlines of Rolland Courbis

A big name in French football has left. Died this Monday, January 12 at the age of 72, Rolland Courbis leaves behind a great career as a player and coach, marked by his three French championship titles as a central defender, then by his stints on the benches of Bordeaux, Marseille and Montpellier in particular.

But in public opinion, the technician converted into a consultant will above all leave the mark of a big mouth with an unrivaled sense of the formula, known for his famous punchlines. Sometimes crazy, often funny but (almost) always kind, the little phrases of “Coach Courbis” quickly became essential in the media landscape of French sport.

“When I think we are going to win 5 to 4”

On August 22, 1998, while his Olympique de Marseille returned to the Vélodrome pitch with a 4-0 deficit on the scoreboard against Montpellier, the coach with his legendary banter met Louis Nicollin, the president of the MHSC and assured him that his team would win.

“That’s balls,” “Loulou” replied, with whom he formed a great friendship during his stay in Hérault. Bluff or absolute confidence, OM won 5-4 at the end of an improbable comeback.

“3-1 is the first cousin of 1-0”

On the evening of Olympique Lyonnais’ 3-1 victory against the Girondins de Bordeaux in the quarter-final first leg of the Champions League on March 30, 2010, Rolland Courbis argued with Daniel Riolo on RMC about Bordeaux’s chances of qualifying for the return match, believing that Yoann Gourcuff and his partners were not that far off the mark.

What follows is a memorable spat with his opponent, not convinced by the mathematical demonstration…

“Evra is the only left-back in the world to be offside from time to time”

Targeted by Patrice Evra during an interview with Téléfoot in which the former French international had taken out the sulphate on several media personalities, Rolland Courbis responded on RMC on October 20, 2013. “To be able to have a career as a defender with so few qualities, without heading, without speed, without marking, it is a feat that I salute,” he reacted with irony.

“Your wife is good”

An experienced technician, “Coach Courbis” was also a great specialist in pranks. After a defeat in the Coupe de France against Sedan in January 2002, the man who then coached Ajaccio had tricked a journalist asking him a question about the transfer window, live on television.

“Let’s say that there, we hesitate with a Turk, Tafam, and Bonn, a small Australian player. So we will think a little in the coming week between Tafam and Bonn.” The journalist saw nothing but fire…

“When a coach changes players during the match and things get better…”

… “Was he smart and did good coaching or was he bad before the game and just fixing the stupid things he did in the first place? “. Invited by L’Équipe to detail his vision of coaching in an interview published on May 9, 2014, the native of Marseille took the opportunity to philosophize, as he usually did, on the role of the coach in football.

“When you are cuckolded, are you cuckolded by your wife or by the guy who goes with your wife? »

Another philosophical reflection thought out loud by the RMC consultant in a broadcast l’After Foot and brought up to date by comedian Baptiste Lecaplain in a sketch retracing the history of the talk show, five years ago.

“The problem at the casino is that when you lose, you have trouble with your banker, and when you win, it’s with the law”

A great fan of casinos and gambling – which notably earned him police custody in 1990 as part of an investigation into a case of fraud in Cannes casinos – Rolland Courbis makes this observation in the program ” Everyone is talking about it » by Thierry Ardisson, in 2000.

“Training OM is like driving an F1 car in the city center”

Spent on the bench of the Marseille club between 1997 and 1999, the 1972 French champion with OM has never hidden the difficulty of training the Marseille context, like this new punchline released on the RMC antennas.