Ex-Ivory Coast coach
©IMAGO
French coach Jean-Louis Gasset has died at the age of 72. This was announced by his long-time club Montpellier HSC, for whom he was on the sidelines in 21 games between October 2024 and April 2025. It was his third engagement with the 2012 champions, for whom he also played professionally from 1975 to 1985. Gasset was born in Montpellier in 1953. His father Bernard Gasset was one of the club’s founding members.
“As a child of the club, he left a lasting impression on everyone he met with his professionalism, his kindness and his desire to pass on his knowledge,” the HSC wrote in an obituary on social media. “Today Montpellier HSC lost one of its iconic figures. We are deeply saddened as we remember his smile, his inimitable voice and his sharp mind. President Laurent Nicollin and the entire club would like to express their sincere condolences to Jean-Louis Gasset’s family, in particular his son Robin, currently assistant to Zoumana Camara at the helm of the club’s first team, his daughter Coralie, his mother Eliane and the entire Gasset family.”
Gasset took up his first head coaching position in Montpellier in the summer of 1998; he had previously worked there as an assistant coach for seven years. In September 2000 he took over SM Caen before moving back into the second tier: he worked under Luis Fernandez at PSG (2001-2003) and Espanyol Barcelona (2003/04). From 2007, Gasset assisted France’s football icon Laurent Blanc, first at Girondins Bordeaux, where they both celebrated the championship together in 2009, then with the French national team (2010-2012) and finally at Paris Saint-Germain between 2013 and 2016. There were eleven joint national titles.
Further coaching positions took Gasset to FC Istres, AS Saint-Étienne and Olympique Marseille. From 2022 to 2024 he also looked after the Ivory Coast as national coach. At the victorious 2024 Africa Cup of Nations in his own country, the Frenchman was released by the Ivorian association after the third matchday and a 0-4 defeat against Equatorial Guinea during the current competition and replaced by Emerse Faé.