Redemption for Antoine Kombouaré as Nantes win Coupe de France

There has been a lack of new blood in Ligue 1 dugouts this season. Frédéric Antonetti, Pascal Dupraz, Jocelyn Gourvennec, Michel der Zakarian and Óscar García have all been given managerial jobs despite underachieving in their previous roles. There is the odd exception – Julien Stéphan and Franck Haise offer a breath of fresh air – but in recent years French clubs have tended to make cautious decisions and hire experienced managers. When Nantes employed Antoine Kombouaré last February, it looked like they were part of that trend.

Save for a year in Saudi Arabia, Kombouaré has bounced from club to club in France without making much of an impact. Sure, he was hard done by when PSG sacked him midway through the 2010-11 season while they were top of the table, but his next job in France, at Lens, seemed to show the limit of his abilities, and his successive sackings at Guingamp, Toulouse and Dijon did little to improve his reputation.

Kombouaré hardly seemed like an imaginative appointment by Nantes but, after Raymond Domenech’s farcical spell, he was at least expected to be a steadying hand at a club famous for its instability in the dugout. Having made his professional debut with Nantes back in the early 1980s, he even had some affinity with the club.

While he fulfilled his remit last season by keeping them up, he only did so through the playoffs, which hardly augured well for this season. The club’s lack of investment in the transfer window was also a worry. Nanteshave been very parsimonious under the ownership of Waldemir Kita and last summer was no exception. The departures of influential midfielders Abdoulaye Touré and Imran Louza were counterbalanced by a smattering of loan signings, including Wylan Cyprien, whose