REIMS, France (AP) — When Reims fired Oscar Garcia in October, the French club had earned only eight points from its opening 10 league games.
Deputy coach Will Still was appointed as caretaker.
Five months later, the Anglo-Belgian coach without a license remains unbeaten and has lifted the Champagne club to eighth in the standings ahead of Sunday’s trip to third-place Monaco.
“To be honest, when I took over, the club’s sort of urgent message was: ‘Will, we have to get out of this relegation scrap.’ We had to stay clear of relegation because it’s the first year that four teams go down in Ligue 1,” Still told the French league’s website.
Fair to say that Still overachieved.
Reviving the six-time champions’ distinguished past, Still and his players have managed 32 points in 16 games since he took charge, making Reims the second-best team behind runaway leader PSG over that period.
PSG, which has an eight-point lead over Marseille, travels to Brest on Saturday. Marseille hosts Strasbourg at the Stade Velodrome on Sunday.
Reims is on a run of 18 matches without defeat — the longest in Europe’s top five divisions — and is guaranteed to remain in the top flight next season. At just 30, Still is the youngest coach in the French league and has yet to finish his qualification to obtain his pro license.
“Nothing replaces experience, nothing replaces what you’ve actually seen and what you’ve actually been through and lived on the pitch and off the pitch,” he said. “I’m doing it now and I’m learning off other people, I’m seeing other things, I’m developing myself as a person and as a coach so it can only be interesting. But obviously, I don’t think it’s the be all and end all.”
After starting as a video analyst and landing several assistant coaching jobs, he became the youngest coach in the history of the Belgian league when he was appointed by Beerschot at the age of 28.
Despite achieving a ninth-place finish, he was not kept and returned to deputy jobs with Reims, then Belgian side Standard before he began a second stint in Champagne that he transformed into a fairy tale.
“People tend to forget that I started when I was 21 as a video analyst and it’s now, I think, my eighth or ninth season in professional football,” said Still, who never played football at pro level. “So although I’m really young, I have got a few years behind me that I can sort of look back at and reflect on.”
Alongside Still, the other Reims revelation this season has been Folarin Balogun. On loan from Arsenal, the 21-year-old striker has scored 15 goals, only three less than the league’s top scorer Kylian Mbappé.
At the other end of the pitch, Still can count on goalkeeper Yehvann Diouf, who has produced a remarkable total of 11 clean sheets in 19 appearances, the best ratio in the league this season. According to the league’s statistics, Diouf has saved 84.6% of the shots he faced.
With both attacking firepower and a wall in the goal, the question on everyone’s lips is where will Still stop?
“Let’s just try and push and see where we can get to, and the higher we get the better it is,” he said. “We want to be competitive, and you know, have a proper go at it.”
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