50 years of the MHSC: Louis Nicollin, the incredible saga of a pack leader who became a triumphant patriarch

A trash king at the top of French football. The shortcut alone sums up the completely crazy destiny of an extraordinary character. A football-mad Lyonnais, raised in the cult of OL and who made Montpellier a football stronghold.

A Midi Libre special issue of 84 pages

Condensing half a century of history into 84 pages. This is the challenge taken up by the sports editorial team of Midi Libre in this special edition on the 50th anniversary of the MHSC. Available on newsstands on December 11 for just 5 euros, this glossy magazine will allow you to relive the great moments in the history of the Montpellier club through our “50” who made the MHSC. Builders, of course, starting with this “Nicollin Saga”, told by Laurent and Colette, the wife of the late Loulou, but also Georges Frêche, the mayor who became a friend. A special edition packed with anecdotes and unpublished photos with an exclusive interview with Olivier Giroud.

Trying to sketch the portrait of Louis Nicollin in a few pages is like tackling the ascent of Everest. We don't know which side to approach it from. The man who flirted with seventh heaven with his team also reached the heights of popularity in French football and beyond, even though he sometimes went off the rails in his verbal sallies made without reminder.

The extraordinary destiny of a garbage collector's son, sensitized to the values ​​of work and life behind a dump truck and who collected gold and successes in his sporting and professional success. The trajectory fascinates as much as the character. Massive, whole, unpredictable, both gargantuan and pagnolesque.

8 kilometers on foot to go see his idols at Gerland

“My father had two entities to grow. The company was the rational side and football the irrational”summarizes his son Laurent. Born in the Drôme, Louis grew up in the suburbs of Lyon, in Saint-Fons, where he forged a pure gone soul. His head in the fumes of the Saint-Gobain factory, very close by, and his heart very quickly painted with the colors of OL. From Place Durel, where he used to play catch, to the legendary Stade Gerland, 8 kilometers to walk with his buddies to admire his idols in the flesh and in shorts, Aubour, Combin, Di Nallo, Djorkaeff… When he wasn’t making the pilgrimage to L’Ours blanc, the players’ “canteen” right next to Perrache station.

Read also: Montpellier: Louis Nicollin celebrates "his" forty years at Midi Libre

This fine team of friends, which he had built around a shared love of the jersey – already – perhaps had no other goal than to deceive the boredom of an only child that sometimes came to grip him on rainy days. Gilbert Varlot – the future GM of his group – reigned at the head of this joyful band, soon joined by a young pawn from Cour Pascal, the club where Louis would fail his baccalaureate three times. Robert Nouzaret had the same high-pitched cheekiness and above all the prestige of a promising young OL player. It was he who would notably put Loulou in contact with Fleury Di Nallo, the idol who became a friend…

In La Paillade, Louis Nicollin married a neighborhood and a destiny

Louis dreamed of his balloon trips on the banks of the Rhône, not really on the banks of a Hérault river lapping the sides of a neighborhood stadium. Especially since Father Marcel Nicollin, a tireless worker, considered football to be “a job for lazy people”, ce which did not prevent him from creating a swimming school. Sent to Hérault to make the family cleaning business prosper, the young heir will ignore family recommendations and will resurrect the spirit of the SOM, an old dormant club.

Read also: “My brother and I will always claim our trash side”: Laurent Nicollin's confessions for the 50th anniversary of the MHSC

You know the rest by heart. This merger, in November 1974, between the corporate team of the Nicollin company and Montpellier Littoral with Bernard Gasset, the brother he never had, and the help of Carlo Llorens, a journalist from Midi Libre stationed in La Paillade. Louis became Loulou, marrying a destiny, a neighborhood, a legend, at the same time as he would soon lead to the town hall Colette Soulier, a boarding school teacher he met thanks to a chance matchmaker. The woman who will follow him and support him for better or for worse throughout his passion.

Loulou, young president, behind the scenes at La Mosson, with our colleague from Midi Libre at the time, Eric Champel. Midi Libre – Archives

Gypsy battalions that terrorized opponents

It was the almost biblical era of genesis. That of four players traveling per car on the highway of good fortune, when Colette Nicollin and Eliane Gasset ran the La Mosson refreshment bar and made the curtains of the first training center with their own hands. A story sewn with the white and red thread of La Paillade to, one thing leading to another, elevate the MPSC to the rank of an irreducible and soon impregnable Gallic village.

The old-timers tell, with a smile, of the battalions of gypsies, cudgels in hand, who escorted the opponent from the warm-up pitch to the changing rooms at La Mosson. Or that spring day in 1980 when the stadium pitch was unfortunately flooded by a pipe that had been left open, causing the postponement of a D2 match against Montluçon scheduled a few days before a Coupe de France clash against Lens… which Montpellier would dominate.

“We were a bit of a thug but we had to make ourselves respected”

“Bernard and I did some stupid things. We were a bit of a thug but we had to make ourselves respected at home, Loulou said. Scaring the opponent was part of the game, part of the folklore. La Paillade was a bit like Chicago. Nowadays, the car parks are kept.”

May 1987: Montpellier beats Lyon and moves up to D1. Loulou exults with Georges Frêche, the mayor of Montpellier, with a scarf around his neck. Midi Libre – Archives

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Because he “was very rarely wrong about men”,said Robert Nouzaret, the first charismatic coach of this prodigious rise, Loulou, nicknamed the Grizzly in business, jumped through almost as many hoops as gypsies to reach the big leagues. What a consecration for the fiery young business leader, denim jacket on his back, chain and bracelet in the wind, to receive the France Football Manager of the Year award in 1988.

Mages, sorcerers and holy statues

He had apparently calmed down before going to the Parc des Princes to kiss Mitterrand twice (1990 and 1994) but only once to Dame Coupe. Louis will nevertheless remain until the end this funny Loulou, implacable and unclassifiable, who gave Michel Mézy three seconds to make up his mind when he called him for help after a four-year quarrel and who began to address his relatives formally when they upset him.

A president capable of recruiting the Hungarian Laszlo Kiss on a whim by saying to Mézy: “a guy who gets expelled and is applauded by 80,000 people, we'll take him.”In the transfer dice game, he has often won (Milla, Lemoult, Bernardet, Julio Cesar, Tino Costa, Olivier Giroud…), sometimes lost (Asanovic, Paille, Loko, Pedros…). Without ever abandoning the unfortunate habit of wanting to cheat chance.

The solitude of the president, on the bench of the Mosson, before a D1 match, with his legendary cigarette in his hand. Midi Libre – Archives

From the Statue of Saint Gabriel being unbolted and placed on a truck near the Parc for the 1994 final, to the support of a magician who bewitched the surfaces or an African sorcerer who decapitated chickens, Loulou had never tired of relying on the afterlife to try to exorcise ghosts and old demons.

70 former players reassigned in his company

It was still his players who succeeded best. Like during this post-match party following this lost Cup final in 1994, when Fabrice Divert sang a well-known Gainsbourg tune to the words “we have come to tell you that we love you”… before offering a ring to Colette and a bracelet to Louis. The boss, in tears, will admit to having “felt more joy than when we won the Cup in 90.”

Players that he “adored”, to the point of“not being able to separate myself from people who have done service.” 70 of them were reassigned to the club or the family business, sometimes to key positions.

“We were his children, Christmases at the farmhouse were extraordinary”

“Louis Nicollin could trash you on a lost match and on the next won match he would tell you “I told you that, it's so much, I told you that, it's so much”, testifies Franck Silvestre, one of the boss's “favorites” for his honesty and his sense of duty. We were his children and our children his grandchildren. Family meals and Christmases at the Saint-Gabriel farmhouse were extraordinary…”

Bet held on May 21, 2012: the president gets his hair done in the colors of La Paillade by Rémy Cabella to celebrate the title. Midi Libre – RICHARD DE HULLESSEN

Maybe Loulou was simply a seller of happiness. An eternal teenager, a collector of jerseys and emotions, having overcome the loneliness of the only child in the comforting pack of the clan where he only asked to love and be loved in return.

Short sentences and middle fingers to the football business

A man with no filter and famous outbursts, but unable to tell his sons how much he loved them other than by sending them messages through relatives. As his wife Colette so aptly sums up, “There was a lot of modesty behind the abruptness.”

Because Louis did his hair for his players, to the point of having his hair curled like them or displaying his famous crest in the club's colours on a bet, the day after the 2012 title, like a rooster proudly raised at the top of French football. A final snub to conventions, a middle finger to football business and an ultimate consecration of this family football that he has always defended.

Consecration on May 21, 2012, Place de la Comédie, with the presentation of the title of champion of France. Midi Libre – Richard De Hullessen

In this Petite Camargue that he never left, he was able to taste a certain serenity “that came to me when I became a landowner”, he said. “His bulls, he talked to me about them almost more than football” Michel Mézy would confirm.

“I'll leave this club between four boards, that's all”

While handing over the reins to his son Laurent, who had paid 14 million euros out of his own pocket during the Ligue 2 wilderness (2004-2009), he still issued these final warnings from afar, in which both the father and the boss were present: “I don't want us to end up in the same situation as Lens or Monaco, I want us to keep our feet on the ground. If you sign players for 200,000 or 300,000, you'll go bankrupt.”

While adding: “I'll leave this club between four boards, that's all.” It happened one day in June when a black sun had invited itself into the sky of La Paillade. To collapse in Nîmes, on the day of his 74th birthday, where he had gone to find the lifeblood of his greatest successes… We thought it was a new joke but it was just sad enough to cry.

“These people who stopped to pay their respects, that's the story of his life”

When the funeral procession left the farmhouse a few days later for a very pailladin tribute, in front of Saint-Pierre Cathedral, in the light of the supporters' smoke bombs, the guard of honor of the company's employees accompanied Loulou for kilometers, along the furrow that he traced in this strange microcosm. An image that will embrace Michel Platini in the car, in the heart of the family circle: “I haven't cried often in my life but there, yes. The people who stopped in the fields to collect themselves, that's the story of his life.”

Read also: Funeral of Louis Nicollin in Montpellier: relive the ceremony

A story that resurfaces and bounces again in La Mosson to the sound of grateful applause, in the 74th minute of each match. Huge, unique, excessive perhaps. Like Louis.

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