On Sunday evening, Noël Le Graët is a guest at Bartoli Time on RMC. During the interview, he makes comments about Zidane that trigger a volley of green wood and force him to apologize. Behind the scenes of a historical show.
“The new show, hosted by Marion Bartoli, takes place every Sunday at 7 p.m.! Together with Jean-Christophe Drouet, she takes stock of all the sports news of the weekend, in a frank and direct tone!” Launched in September 2022, the new program Bartoli Time keeps all its promises in a “candid and direct tone”, also and above all on the part of its guests. Latest example Noël Le Graët, whose comments about Zidane’s “I wouldn’t even want to take him on the phone”, “I have nothing to shake”, have been controversial and have sparked an international uproar, starting with Kylian Mbappé on Sunday night.
An interview that was originally supposed to be recorded at 6:00 PM. It is Marion Bartoli who conducts the interview and presents Bartoli Time with the theme: “We are doing a show, from 7 pm to 8 pm. I have a few questions about Deschamps’ extension.” Noël Le Graët accepts, but asks to be called back at 7:30 pm (“there, I’m watching a match”)
“At 7:30 p.m. we call him, he doesn’t answer because we call him from the control room, so in a hidden number,” says Jean-Christophe Drouet, the show’s host. We deliver, Marion gives his opinion on Deschamps , we take two listeners. It is 7:42 PM when Noël Le Graët calls Marion on his mobile phone while she is talking. I tell her on the air, answer, we’re live. We start the ad and behind him he is with us. He knows very well that we are live, because that is how he is launched.
An interview found on the show’s podcast that takes place in a very friendly tone. “You start to feel like it’s a highlight when you talk about his potential successor.” As a reminder, Le Graët had explained, despite the democratic rules that govern the life of the federation: “It is not an indication or passing of the baton. But we can help someone if we want to. With Didier Deschamps , we looked to a few possible names to succeed me. I’ll take a good look.”
JC Drouet: “And the strange thing is that with Zidane it is a total misunderstanding on his part”
“It was strong, but we would have stuck with the election of his successor, it would only have interested specialists. It’s the outings about Zidane that give this interview an incredible scale. And what’s crazy is that with Zidane it’s a total I don’t want to put him in the wrong position at any point, I asked him if, as a Frenchman, he didn’t mind seeing Zidane coach a team like Brazil.” The answer was not long in coming: “I don’t care.”
When the video clips and the right images are launched in the management and around the community managers of RMC-sport to put this strong moment on the social networks, the rest of the interview takes place in a very cordial tone. “There’s no specific tension, it’s just that he answers without a filter, he speaks to Marion, he respects the champion and that’s why he answers her.”
On social networks, Le Graët’s interview and his sweeping statements spread like wildfire (4.4 million views on twitter on Monday afternoon). Kylian Mbappé, the first and only active Blue to speak out to defend Zidane, has given Le Graët’s words global resonance.
Shortly after 10am on Monday morning, Le Graët apologized to Zidane in a press release sent to AFP, explaining that the RMC interview was looking for controversy. A replay of the podcast show will be enough to show that this was definitely not the case. “I gave an interview to RMC that I should not have given because he sought controversy by pitting Didier against Zinedine Zidane, two monuments of French football. I admit that I made awkward comments that caused a misunderstanding. Zinedine Zidane knows the immense esteem that I have for him, like all French people. I want to apologize for these comments that absolutely do not reflect my thoughts, nor my attention to the player he was and the coach he became.”
