L’Equipe newspaper reported that the Al-Ittihad administration is on the verge of appointing Laurent Blanc as the team’s coach to succeed Marcelo Gallardo.
Former Al-Ittihad President Louay Al-Nazer had reached an agreement with Italian Stefano Pioli, but with Al-Nazer’s resignation, the chances of the former Milan coach arriving in Jeddah ended.
The current Al-Ittihad management is seeking to sign a French coach who will be welcomed by Karim Benzema in order to prevent crises like last season’s, which led to the dismissal of Nuno Santo and then Gallardo.
According to the latest report, the Al-Ittihad’s first choice was to sign Al-Duhail’s current Qatari coach, Christophe Galtier, who previously worked with Benzema in Lyon in 2007.
But the Al-Duhail administration rejected the idea of abandoning the former Paris Saint-Germain coach, so the Al-Ittihad administration turned to the alternative plan, which was to sign another French coach, Laurent Blanc.
Blanc knows Benzema well, as he supervised his training in the French national team from 2010 to 2012, and the relationship between them is very friendly and good.
The negotiations between Al-Ittihad and Blanc have entered their final stages, and perhaps it is only a matter of hours before the Dean’s administration will announce the appointment of the 58-year-old Frenchman as the team’s coach.
It is noteworthy that this is Blanc’s second experience in the Arab region after he worked with Al Rayyan of Qatar from 2020 to 2022.
Blanc did not achieve many accomplishments outside of Paris Saint-Germain as a coach, as he won the French League and Cup titles with Bordeaux in 2008, and his last experiences were very modest with Lyon.
