Sunderland Nation

Kyril Louis-Dreyfus reveals the 'extraordinary qualities' he sees in Regis Le Bris

Sunderland owner and chairman Kyril Louis-Dreyfus has given a rare interview in France, and used it to explain why he thinks Regis Le Bris is special.

Michael Graham

Kyril Louis-Dreyfus - Sunderland owner and chairman
Kyril Louis-Dreyfus - Sunderland owner and chairman / IMAGO / Pro Sports Images

Sunderland chairman Kyril Louis-Dreyfus has revealed the ‘extraordinary qualities’ that Regis Le Bris has brought to the northeast club.

Le Bris was appointed Sunderland head coach in July after a protracted recruitment process, and he was largely unknown to supporters before that.

However, it has proven to be an incredibly astute appointment so far with Sunderland top of the Championship table as they head to face Luton on Wednesday.

ALSO READ: 'Judge Sunderland after ten games,' they said - so let's judge

Louis-Dreyfus played a key role in identifying and appointing Le Bris, and he believes there is an awful lot more to come from the former Lorient boss.

Speaking to RMC Sport, Louis-Dreyfus said: “His greatest quality? It’s very difficult to say but I think that if I talk purely about the mental aspect... One thing that excites us all within the club, even before the arrival of Régis Le Bris, which we found at home and which really encouraged us to take him, is that he is relentless as they say in English.

“It’s the idea of ​​never stopping and always trying to progress and what we saw in him is that he sees the development of a team and a club as something that never stops. He is always looking at how to improve things at all levels and in all aspects.

“That is also, in terms of mentality, the thing that we were trying to do as a club. One thing that really connects us is this passion for progress, to try to improve as a club both individually and collectively.”

Sunderland has often been a tumultuous environment off the pitch since Louis-Dreyfus arrived and essentially took player recruitment out of the head coach’s hands.

Alex Neil, the coach who got Sunderland out of League One, claimed frustration over not having control over recruitment was they key reason he quit Sunderland for Stoke, and his replacement Tony Mowbray grew frustrated too as the club failed to land him a senior striker.

Regis Le Bris - Sunderland coach
IMAGO / NurPhoto

Le Bris, though, according to Louis-Dreyfus, is fully aligned with that model as his main passion and focus is developing a team – not buying one.

“If I give for example a quality that is really striking in him, it is his work methodology and in particular on the development of a team collectively and individually,” he said.

“I think that there are a lot of coaches today who like to do a lot of different things in clubs. We have coaches who want to do recruitment, others who want to do other things. But him, I think that where he feels most comfortable is on a field coaching the team.

“We think that is where he really has extraordinary qualities. With the level of detail in his analyses and in his daily work with the players.

It hasn’t only been results that have endeared Le Bris to Sunderland fans either. The man he replaced, Michael Beale, was often publicly at odds with supporters as he attempted to lecture them on how they should be supporting their club.

Le Bris, by contrast, arrived and immediately started asking what football he’d need to produce to ignite – and then utilise – the full passion of the supporters.

Louis-Dreyfus explained: “I think the thing he really succeeded in doing was showing a lot of curiosity about the club, about the people at the club, about the supporters, about the history of the club.

“He learned and understood very, very quickly what type of club it is, how to work there, and who the people are around. He really, with very impressive speed, was able to understand the context in which he arrived and how to manage it.

“Four to six weeks after his arrival, he already had a very clear idea of ​​what he had to do and the context of the club. From my point of view, this is one of the things that allowed him to make this good start to the Championship.

“It is linked to his capacity and his curiosity to understand at such speed a championship, a team, players and a completely new staff.”

Sunderland have actually made their joint-best start in the club’s entire history to a season in the second tier. Only the team from 1975/76 can patch it, and they ended up being promoted.

Is that what Louis-Drefus is now expecting from the Black Cats this season?

“It’s really too early to say where the team will be at the end of the season,” he said. “In the Championship seasons I’ve been involved in, I’ve seen a team that was last in November get promoted and I’ve seen teams that were first or second in February finish in seventeenth place.

“It’s a championship that’s so long that it’s hard to say.”

Published |Modified
Michael Graham
MICHAEL GRAHAM