The remarkable rise of AJ Auxerre under Guy Roux

At 16, Guy Roux was happy to play for his local football team, Association de la Jeunesse Auxerroise, but delusions of grandeur were not part of the equation. Yes, AJ Auxerre had a decent reputation among the parochial volunteers who persisted with amateur Burgundy football, but there was little to recommend the club beyond municipal munificence.

Formed by Ernest-Théodore Valentin Deschamps, a local priest, in 1905, the sporting association was intended as little more than a recreational outlet for nearby townsfolk. Sequestered 100 miles south of Paris, with a pre-War population below 25,000, sleepy Auxerre was known more for producing Chablis wine than marquee football, and few outsiders knew much about its dilettante clubs. (1) (2)

AJA played in the regional fourth tier when the teenaged Roux debuted in 1954, and triple-digit crowds were cause for giddy excitement. A single ragged grandstand offered 150 seats and somewhere to stash the groundsman’s tools, while changing rooms and running water were conspicuously absent. Club equipment was stored in a nondescript hut beside a generic tennis court, and a rudimentary running track encircled the tatty pitch. (3)

There are few accurate records of Roux’s playing career at AJA because, well, few cared enough to compile them. Domestic football was comparatively slow to take hold in France, with professionalism dawning in 1932 and a national league spawned soon thereafter. The regional amateur leagues, meanwhile, barely mustered chatter in the local bistros and cafés. (4)

We know Roux played three seasons for Auxerre before later stops at Stade Poitevin and Limoges. We know little about his performance, though, while assessments of his ability are lost to the passage of time. Roux seems to have been good, not great, and from an early age, he set his sights on a coaching career, determined to build a local club that could transcend the provincial purview.

While working as a teacher, administrator and insurance broker, indeed, Roux built connections throughout football. Thirsty for knowledge and experience, in 1960, a 22-year-old Roux wrote to Crystal Palace manager Arthur Rowe seeking an internship. Rowe obliged, and the curious Roux spent a month with the Eagles in London. (5) (6) (7)

Inadvertently, another English club catalysed Roux’s managerial journey a year later. When Crewe Alexandra played Auxerre in a 1961 friendly, the Railwaymen were short of players, and Roux was called upon to translate. A solution seemed elusive, putting the match in jeopardy, but Roux volunteered to play for Crewe, making up the numbers. He played well enough, in fact, that Auxerre president Jean Garnault invited Roux back to the club. (8)

Eyeing a chance to mould a club in his own image, Roux responded with a six-page letter to Garnault, outlining his vision for Auxerre and requesting a player-manager position. By then more than 8,000 francs in debt, and still mired in the regional fourth division, AJA sought urgent help, and Roux stresses self-sufficiency in his meandering blueprint. He promised to mow the pitch himself and ask local farmers to donate manure as fertiliser. He vowed to have players’ wives stitch bibs for use in training sessions. He volunteered to chop wood to heat the ramshackle changing rooms and man the club’s phone-lines to save expense. Oh, and Roux requested a salary of just 7,200 francs per year – by far the lowest of all applicants. And that was the deciding factor in Garnault giving the youngster a chance. (6) (8) (9) (10)

A year into his project, Roux was called to complete national service. Then, in 1963, Jean-Claude Hamel succeeded Garnault as AJA president, creating further uncertainty. However, Hamel, a well-connected businessman, shared Roux’s vision for a self-sustained club. The local council became a key supporter of AJA under Hamel’s aegis, and a thrifty gameplan emerged to bolster the unheralded association. (7) (11) 

Shortcuts and sacrifices were required to bootstrap a functional football club. In 1966, for instance, Roux worked as a part-time journalist at the World Cup in England just so he could scout and network in his free time. Shorn of expensive equipment or even basic facilities, old school training methods were also a necessity at AJA, with Roux leading his players on runs through the woods. (10) (12)

Such efforts paid dividends in 1970, when AJA secured promotion out of the regional leagues and into national Division 3. A further promotion came in 1974, when AJA finished fourth, behind the B teams of Lyon, Saint-Étienne and Marseille, all of whom were ineligible for advancement. Roux prized pragmatism, and a team-first culture propelled Auxerre into the professional ranks. 

Thrust into a division with established entities like Lorient, Brest and Paris FC, Auxerre had to tape together auxiliary infrastructure – the club’s on-field progress outstripping its operational maturity. Jean Edy was hired as an overworked secretary. Roux pushed for the construction of a dedicated training centre. And the manager even planted seeds on the unsightly athletics track at Stade de l'Abbé-Deschamps, determined to one day build terraces closer to the pitch. (10) (13) (14)

With shrewd recruitment, Auxerre became a stable second tier force. National audiences took notice of the club’s progress in 1976, when AJA held the mighty Marseille to a goalless draw before 9,746 fans in the Coup de France. L’OM won the second leg, 2-0, at the Stade Vélodrome, but Auxerre was unperturbed. Another powerhouse, Saint-Étienne, visited Burgundy a year later, and although the outcome was the same, a crowd of 13,000 showcased Auxerre’s potential.

That potential was burnished in 1979, when AJA reached the Coup de France final, beating Montpellier, Lille and Strasbourg (the reigning French champions) along the way. The first amateur team to make the final since 1933, and the first second-tier outfit to do so since 1959, Auxerre earned plaudits across the nation. In the final, Nantes triumphed, 4-1, after extra-time, as waning fitness took its toll. However, the Parc des Princes attendance of 46,070 eclipsed AJA’s entire combined home attendance (39,935) for 17 league matches that season – a remarkable step towards unprecedented exposure. (13) (15) 

Buoyed by that exposure, indeed, Auxerre won promotion to the top flight in 1980, beating Tours in a championship playoff. Average home attendances grew to over 4,500 that season as word spread of a tiny local team set to make history. The population of Auxerre was around 38,000 when Roux steered its unheralded football club into the first division. An English equivalent would be Accrington, in terms of conurbation size, so imagine John Coleman hauling Stanley to the Premier League, and that is a decent place to start in mapping the magnitude of Roux’s accomplishments. (2) (15)

Before Auxerre’s maiden voyage in the French top flight, Roux had the chance to sign French international striker Olivier Rouyer from Nancy. Yet ever parsimonious, the patriarch prioritised the opening of an academy instead. By allocating funds to the creation of a scouting network, and tapping into the wellspring of talent emanating from nearby Paris, Roux foresaw an organic talent pipeline that would eventually furnish a renewable business model from player sales. Polish poacher Andrzej Szarmach was signed from Stal Mielec on the cheap, instead of the more expensive Rouyer, and the academy was green-lit. (16)

A distinguished Ekstraklasa striker, Szarmach had long yearned to test himself overseas. Auxerre’s ability to lure such a talent spoke to Roux’s encyclopaedic knowledge of overlooked European leagues and a ruthless opportunism that turbocharged his ambition. Szarmach scored 16 goals in his debut campaign as Auxerre finished a respectable tenth. AJA notched famous wins away to PSG and Lyon, clubs with exorbitantly more resources, as talk of the minnows being blown away was comprehensively dismissed.

A slight sophomore slump saw AJA finish fifteenth in 1982, before quantum leaps forward in the two subsequent seasons – an eight-place finish followed by a third-place bronze medal. Roux’s academy began to bear fruit, too, as a young Eric Cantona debuted with Auxerre in 1983, and the team’s proud podium saw it qualify for the UEFA Cup – a once unthinkable notion.

To meet European standards, Auxerre had to build stands behind both goals at Stade de l'Abbé-Deschamps for the first time. A crowd of 21,250 crammed into the patchwork ground to watch AJA overturn an 0-2 first-leg deficit to the powerful Sporting CP, with Szarmach scoring a late equaliser. The Portuguese giants outlasted Auxerre in extra-time, prevailing 4-2, but Les Diplomates’ emergence raised eyebrows across the continent. (3)

That surprise and admiration continued in 1985, when AJA parlayed a fourth-place finish into a second European excursion. AC Milan, a continental behemoth, visited Auxerre for a UEFA Cup first round tie and took a 1-0 lead after three minutes. In the club’s finest hour yet, however, Roux inspired an epochal reversal, as AJA roared back to score three unanswered goals, toppling a Rossoneri team featuring Franco Baresi and Paolo Maldini.

Milan won the second leg, 3-0, before 58,364 at the San Siro, beating Auxerre on aggregate, but the morale victory belonged to AJA. From humble beginnings jostling with amateur rivals like Cercle Dijon and FC Chalon-sur-Saône, Guy Roux built Auxerre into a force capable of beating Sporting CP and AC Milan in one-off matches. The rise was truly remarkable, and Roux made sure everybody knew it.

Swiftly, indeed, AJA morphed into a cult of personality centred on Roux, le personnage emblématique with something of a narcissistic messiah complex. “I make sure a light stays on in my office all day and all night,” Roux once said. “Like a candle in the church showing Christ is there.” (17)

While perhaps facetious, such rhetoric contained a kernel of truth. With each unexpected success, Roux extended his autonomy over Auxerre. A fatherly figure to some, Roux struck terror into others, including club volunteers, who enjoyed his sagacious support while fearing his harsh disciplinarian edge. No less than Michel Platini once accused Roux of ‘looking out for number one,’ a concise summation of a complicated man who defied easy classification. (6) 

Somewhat authoritarian, Roux dragged players out of nightclubs and checked the mileage on their cars at training each morning, scouting for illicit trips to the big city. Roux was so paranoid about his players partying, in fact, that he paid toll booth operators between Auxerre and Paris to act as informants. Upon receiving a tip, he was known to appear outside players’ houses in the depths of night to check the temperature of car bonnets. And when Basile Boli was caught clubbing one night, Roux chained the defender’s moped to a gate and took away the key. (18)

Regardless, Roux’s methods worked, in a similar mould to Sir Alex Ferguson at Manchester United. Fergie actually visited Roux later while scouting Cantona, who wound up at Old Trafford via Marseille, Nîmes and Leeds. The United boss wanted to know more about Cantona’s upbringing, and Roux indulged him over whiskey and Chablis. (7)

To wit, there was a simplicity to Roux’s worldview that kept Auxerre on a focused track while minimising distractions. Accordingly, AJA became ensconced in the top half of the French first division throughout the late-1980s, with frequent appearances in the UEFA Cup.

Progress in that competition proved difficult, though, and Auxerre did not manage to advance beyond the first round of a UEFA Cup campaign until 1989-90. That season, AJA beat Dinamo Zagreb, Apolonia, RoPS and Olympiacos en route to a quarter-final clash with Roberto Baggio’s Fiorentina. I Viola won, 2-0, in the last eight, but the fairytale run gave Auxerre fresh impetus with which to attack a new decade.

In 1991, AJA beat Liverpool, 2-0, at home, only to collapse, 3-0, in the return at Anfield. Then, the following season, 1992-93, gave rise to Auxerre’s most astounding UEFA Cup run to date – Lokomotiv Plovdiv, FC København and Standard Liège swept aside before a quarter-final rendezvous with Ajax, the defending champions.

Coached by Louis van Gaal, and featuring luminaries like Edwin van der Sar, Marc Overmars, Edgar Davids, Clarence Seedorf and Dennis Bergkamp, de Amsterdammers were beaten, 4-2, before 17,952 at Stade de l'Abbé-Deschamps – an Auxerre apotheosis. Learning from previous mistakes, AJA also survived the second leg in Amsterdam to clinch a semi-final berth. Alas, Borussia Dortmund upended Roux’s men on penalties in the final four, lacing the fairytale with heartbreak.

To that end, for all the goodwill and pixie dust, Auxerre still lacked top class silverware by which to validate its ascendence. Sure, AJA had a slew of regional cups and those heralded promotions, but Roux hungered for an elite trophy. And in 1994, he got his hands on one, when AJA beat Montpellier, 3-0, to win the Coup de France. The Parc des Princes crowd of 45,189 outnumbered Auxerre’s entire population, and Roux’s accomplishment earned him consideration as the next French national team manager. (7)

True to form, however, Roux stayed loyal to Auxerre and led them into a new continental frontier – the European Cup Winners’ Cup – in 1994-95. AJA reached the quarter-final of that competition, where it drew with Arsenal at Highbury before losing back home. Once again, though, the minnows won plaudits for their feel-good narrative – even if they always seemed to be outgunned by wealthier opponents when push came to shove.

However, in 1995-96, Auxerre would not be denied, as Roux authored his most triumphant chapter yet: a league and cup double that echoed through history. With Thierry Henry at Monaco, Zinedine Zidane at Bordeaux and Youri Djorkaeff at PSG, little Auxerre dominated domestically while averaging 10,000 fans per home game for the first time in their history. (15)

After threatening to leave Auxerre if key players were sold, Roux pieced together a remarkably well-balanced team of undervalued overachievers headlined by Laurent Blanc, a reclamation project from Saint-Étienne; Taribo West, a sensation after a speculative trial; and Sabri Lamouchi, a smart lower league find. No AJA player scored more than 10 league goals, with Lilian Laslandes the leading marksman for a team that was greater than the sum of its parts. (7)

In truth, Auxerre failed to scale such lofty heights ever again – quite naturally, given the improbability of their achievements and the marching commercialisation of larger clubs. Enchanted Champions League and UEFA Cup nights still punctuated the underdog milieu – quarter-finals in each competition following in 1997 and 1998 – but as larger clubs came calling for key AJA players, a lull was felt while awaiting the next wave.

Blanc was poached by Barcelona at the behest of Johan Cruyff. West joined Internazionale for a hefty fee. And the construction of a new core – centred on Djibril Cissé, Phillipe Mexès, Jean-Alain Boumsong and Teemu Tainio – encountered teething problems. All showed glimmers of excellent potential, but AJA settled into mid-table mediocrity as they cut their collective teeth.

There was also upheaval in the boardroom and dugout around the new millennium – rare challenges for Auxerre. In 2000, the old association model was absorbed into a Société Anonyme à Objet Sportif (SAOS) – a precursor to greater commercialisation, the likes of which attracted PlayStation as a shirt sponsor. Then, following the 1999-2000 season, Roux took a sabbatical, aged 62, while retaining a de facto sporting director role.

By that point, Roux had grown into an iconic figure of French pop culture, his trademark beanie hat, bulbous nose and rosy jowls becoming an avatar of no-nonsense productivity. The avuncular Roux, increasingly corpulent yet ebullient, became a pitchman for several major brands, while Les Guignols, the French equivalent of Spitting Image, parodied his larger-than-life persona. Jacques Chirac awarded Roux the Légion d'honneur, France’s highest honour, in 1999, and there was a general sense that he outgrew Auxerre. Perpetual links to the French national team job resurfaced, but Roux seemed content to play the part of ‘Guy Roux’ – until AJA needed him again. (7) (18)

In May 2001, Bayer Leverkusen approached Roux to gauge his interest in replacing Berti Vogts as their head coach. That seemed to plant a seed in Roux’s mind or rekindled a flame for the dugout, and he leveraged the German interest to engineer a return to the Auxerre sideline. Upon hearing of the Leverkusen interest, AJA powerbrokers asked Roux to return as coach, dispensing with Daniel Rolland, who achieved a thirteenth-place finish in his only season in charge. Roux then returned in a blaze of glory, that old enormous ego duly tickled. (19)

Ultimately, Roux completed four further seasons as Auxerre manager, symbolised mainly by the emergence of Cissé into a predatory poacher. Indeed, Cissé joined Boumsong on the scoresheet as AJA beat Ronaldinho and PSG, 2-1, before 78,316 to hoist the Coupe de France in 2003. A further Coupe win came two years later, after which Roux retired for good – well, save for an incongruous seven-game spell in charge of Lens.

Auxerre slipped down the league table once Roux left, a third-place finish in 2009-10 the exception rather than the rule. Somewhat symbolically, AJA also failed to progress from a Champions League group of titans – Milan, Ajax and Real Madrid – in 2010-11, and has not returned to European competition since.

Surprisingly, Auxerre was relegated from Ligue 1 in 2011-12, and only a €5 million injection by venture capitalist Emmanuel Limido prevented bankruptcy in 2013. Three years later, James Zhou, a Chinese packaging magnate, bought a 60% stake in the club, which abandoned the SAOS model in favour of a more corporate Société par Actions Simplifiée (SAS) arrangement. (20)

Roux maintained a shadowy power over AJA, though he receded into an emeritus ambassadorial role in his seventies. Nevertheless, when Zhou unveiled lavish plans to open a Chinese academy and use Auxerre to further Sino football, Roux spoke up, embodying the club’s conscience. Zhou eyed Jean-Pierre Papin as a high-profile coach and sporting director, but Roux’s disapproval weighed heavily as that strategy was scotched. (21)

After a decade in the second tier, Auxerre was promoted again in 2021-22, only to be relegated after a solitary Ligue 1 season. A further promotion was won under Christophe Pélissier in 2023-24, and the club managed to stay up last season, finishing eleventh.

This year, AJA has gotten off to a decent start and currently sits tenth in Ligue 1. Surviving and stabilising in the top flight feels like a sensible goal for Les Diplomates, who now regularly average more than 16,000 fans at home games – a far cry from the hundred or so who showed up for Guy Roux’s ancient debut. (15)

Roux still attends Auxerre matches, incidentally. He is now 86-years-old and, in many ways, a living monument to the club he put on the map. Nothing would bring Roux greater joy than seeing AJA have one last tilt at Europe before he leaves this mortal coil, and the newfangled UEFA Conference League offers a more manageable target.

The nostalgic among us would love to see it happen, although the odds are stacked against Auxerre in a plutocratic sporting age. Stranger things have happened in Burgundy, though. AJA has overcome longer odds before, from the regional leagues to the Champions League, and that dream will always remain, testament to the visionary who conjured it.

Sources

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