50 years of MHSC: relegations, sacked coaches, floods… the cursed anniversaries of the Montpellier club

Blanc, Pavon, Der Zakarian, Milla, Paille, Ziober, Barrabé, Baills, Guérin, Bernardet, Passi : pluie de stars en novembre 2004 pour les 30 ans du MHSC. Mais le club vient de replonger en Ligue 2. Midi Libre – PAUL PANSANEL

Bottom of Ligue 1, Montpellier Hérault celebrates its 50th anniversary this Tuesday, November 5th, with a hangover. As if a dark curse attached itself every ten years to each of its celebrations…

In a club where the boss used to call on mages or a sorcerer who decapitated chickens, superstition is not an empty word. Louis Nicollin had ended up no longer burning candles in churches before matches, but he did not hesitate to exclude a close friend from a trip if he considered him to be a “black cat”.

Read also:MHSC 50th Anniversary: ​​The Club Unveils an Away Jersey Full of History, and a Magnificent Nod to the Past

From the skies where he watches, helplessly and desperately, as his team descends into the depths of the League, Loulou must convince himself that his MHSC is cursed. Struck by the Evil Eye every time he prepares to celebrate a birthday in style.

Coaches Sacrificed on the Altar of 20 and 25 Years

In the fall of 1994, everything seems to be going well for the young Ligue 1 star, not even ten years in the elite and a recent finalist in the Coupe de France. But a growth crisis resulted in a worrying start to the season, forcing Louis Nicollin to part ways with his coach, Gérard Gili, and to urgently call Michel Mézy, a few weeks before celebrating the club's 20th anniversary.

If Montpellier managed to save its head at the end of the championship, this would not be the case five years later. In the autumn of 1999, a few weeks after a nevertheless promising success in the Intertoto Cup, it was this time Jean-Louis Gasset who was sacrificed on the altar of the club's 25th anniversary, paying for a forced transplant of former Nantais (Pédros, Decroix, Gourvennec, Loko), which never took off.

Despite a new call to Michel Mézy during the season, the club would make a first return trip to Ligue 2 at the end of the season as a warning.

2004: a shower of stars… for a crossing of the desert

When the 30th anniversary of La Paillade rang out, the miracle workers returned, but after believing themselves protected by superior forces, the club fell from a great height. A year earlier, Gérard Bernardet, associated with Pascal Baills and Ghislain Printant, saved the club from certain relegation and celebrated the divine offering with a pilgrimage to Lourdes by bike. A few months later, he paid the bill after a season complicated by a first flooding of the La Mosson stadium and the postponements of matches and points that will never be recovered… The hasty recall of Robert Nouzaret did not prevent Montpellier from plunging back into Ligue 2.

At the start of the 2004-2005 season, our friend Robert was even thanked and replaced by Jean-François Domergue. It is with the reception of Châteauroux as a poster that the MHSC celebrates its thirtieth anniversary on November 28. “If we have to stay in Ligue 2, we will stay there as long as it takes, we have not forgotten where we come from”,Louis Nicollin says to disguise his bitterness. That day, Loulou feels like he's watching his life in a balloon go by with a dream curtain raiser: Blanc, Bernardet, Cantona, Julio Cesar, Asanovic, Gravelaine, Milla, Valderrama… A shower of stars to accompany a crossing of the desert that will last five years.

2014: the party washed away by the flood

As he approaches 40, everything is going well this time in sporting terms. The team coached by Rolland Courbis is firmly established in the middle of the table. But the sky will attack her again by pouring torrential rains that flood the Stade de La Mosson on October 6, 2014.

October 2014: La Mosson Stadium is devastated by torrential rains. The club's 40th anniversary gala match will be cancelled. Midi Libre – RICHARD DE HULLESSEN

Having become homeless in Ligue 1, MHSC will have to go into exile for several months at the Altrad Stadium. The gala match scheduled for November against AC Milan is cancelled. The festivities, postponed, will take place in secret on 28 March 2015 in La Grande-Motte. “Can we consider building a new stadium? ? We will have to sit down with the elected officials to talk about it?” says Laurent Nicollin, bitterly. Ten years later, nothing has changed. And Montpellier is sinking in silence, trying to light itself with the candles of memories.

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