Michel Mézy is now a special advisor to the president, Laurent Nicollin. Midi Libre – JEAN MICHEL MART
Player, coach, manager, advisor to the president… Since 1979, the former Nîmes player has experienced everything at La Paillade with Loulou then Laurent Nicollin. The worst and especially the best.
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, 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. Players, coaches, but also builders, at start with this “Nicollin Saga”, told by Laurent and Colette, the wife of the late Loulou. A magazine full of anecdotes and unpublished photos with an exclusive interview with Olivier Giroud.
A special 80-page issue on newsstands starting December 11. midi libre
He is teeming with anecdotes, vibrates with a host of emotions that his eyes betray behind his glasses. Michel Mézy (76 years old), a local mouth and cheeky, has amassed them for more than 40 years from a Paillade that he did not create but saved twice, promoted as many times and carried to two of its three titles (D2 1987 and Coupe de France 1990). To build it. Player, manager, coach, special advisor and confidant, the guy from Grau-du-Roi has seen and known almost everything about this club, forever sitting to the right of the founding father, Loulou Nicollin.
He still occupies this place, perpetuating the history with his son Laurent, “my little one”, he says. A way to honor a pact sealed with the patriarch. “Before he died, he told me “I'm warning you. You protect everyone as long as you can.” That was the deal. He made me commit otherwise I wouldn't be here anymore.”
“I think that until his last breath, he will be with me”
Mézy is still there, right there, watching every training session at Grammont. “Michel loves football deeply. He grew up with it, he lives with it, eats football. I think that until his last breath, he will be with me”, says Laurent Nicollin. A question of honor, no doubt. “It doesn't exist anymore,slice the former midfielder then defender. But I have some. It’s a value from before ? But I’m from before!”
Mézy can be read and heard, with his gravelly voice, a vestige of that cigarette in his mouth that was definitively crushed a few months before the death of Louis Nicollin, in 2017. Above all, he measures himself against this loyalty, unwavering despite his double identity. On one side Nîmes, the training club, that of learning “values” in this youth spent on this damned stabilized that grated his calves; on the other Montpellier, adulthood. “The family”, he prefers.
Loulou-Mézy, irrational friendship “but so beautiful”
As a summary of this duality, Laurent Nicollin exhumes his first shared memory: “A meal. I was 6 or 7 years old, we were at his place in Grau-du-Roi. He had opened a trunk and given my brother and me a red Nîmes Olympique tracksuit top. We kept it for a while, not because it was Nîmes but at the time, they didn't have everything they have now. So when we had something out of the ordinary, we kept it.”
And then, I joined a club with a guy, it wasn't football anymore. It went beyond football.
“I was taught to give before receiving”, Mézy likes to say. “And then, I arrived in a club with a guy, it wasn't football anymore, he adds, his eyes misty, his throat tight. It went beyond football.”To become life together, or almost. Mézy-Nicollin, Nicollin-Mézy, the story of an irrational friendship. “But so beautiful”, his right arm breathes. “Everything that is passionate is inexplicable.”
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As a player, Michel Mézy played 96 matches with the Paillade jersey, between 1979 and 1982. Midi Libre – SCANNER
Their first meeting is like this. Mézy recounts like no one else that day of the Cévennes episode, in Alès, during a 32nd final of the Coupe de France in 1979, between Nîmes whose armband he wears and Montpellier. “I want to stop the match. (René) Girard is sent off, we are reduced to ten. And it rains like that. Ouattara, captain of Montpellier, wants to continue playing, normal. And I hear a voice behind saying, “Mr. Mézy is right”. It was Nicollin”, he rewinds.
Read also: “My brother and I, we will always claim our trash side” : Laurent Nicollin's confessions for the 50th anniversary of the MHSC
The beginning of an adventure that began a few months later when Mézy the player, leader of the star rankings France Football, is poached from Nîmes, where he does not see the expected contract with retraining included coming. La Paillade is only 4 years old but is already sailing at the lower level. And Nicollin doesn't back down from anything. “I go to his place with the contract drawn up by my lawyer: 3 years as a player, and 25 years as a manager in the company, with a salary indexed to the cost of living. There were 6 or 7 pages. Boom, boom, boom. He didn't even look at it and signed.”
“He didn't let me breathe anymore”
Loulou will give it back in his own way, excessive. “From then on, this guy (Nicollin) didn't let me breathe anymore. It was crazy, inexplicable”, laughs Mézy who accepts the sacrifice, encourages his teammates to leave their pay to help a club in difficulty in 1980. And becomes coach, willingly or unwillingly. “What I never wanted!”, remembers the man who was then a manager and faced with a fait accompli. ““Don’t argue anymore, I found him, me, the coach”, Loulou told me. Oh really ? “You!”“.
Michel Mézy and Loulou Nicollin brandishes the Coupe de France, won in 1990. Midi Libre – Midi Libre
From this catapulting will be born the D2 title in 1986-87 and a rescue in 1989-90, crowned by the replacement of Laurent Blanc in defense and especially the Coupe de France. Before the falling out, the day after the coronation, the first of this extraordinary couple, and the return of Mézy to Nîmes. To better come back in 1994 and avoid yet another relegation that he would not prevent in 2000, going back up the following year.
“Fuck, you're better off where you are. But we'll get through this.”
The emotional and sporting yo-yo fits the atypical trajectory of La Paillade and Mézy. “She's a person who is part of the family. It was complicated when there were departures. There was joy when there were returns. It was even more complicated when there were departures,” laughs Laurent Nicollin. But that's the history of the club. Breakups, hugs, disappointments, joys, arguments and then reconciliations. Maybe it's our fault, but we're a family club. It's only in family that we don't say things. And when we do, it explodes.”
On All Saints' Day, Michel Mézy went to the grave of his parents and Loulou. What did he say to him? ? “Fuck, you're better off where you are. But we will get through this.” Faith of Mézy. “He is also a Pailladin and as they say “a Pailladin never gives up”, concludes Laurent Nicollin. So we hang on. We support each other.” It's been going on for almost fifty years.
Also read: 50 years of MHSC: Cup victory, European epic, death of Bruno Martini… Pascal Baills' contrasting memories
Also read: 50 years of MHSC: Jean-Marc Valadier, local scorer and first guide to a new world
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