Les Grosses Têtes: LE LIVRE DU JOUR - "Puzzle" de Didier Roustan

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RTL, the book of the day.

At the book of the day, I'm not going to tell you who the author is because it would be too easy to find the answer to the question I'm going to ask first.

But after, we will have the one who just published a sort of Bible on football in some cases, some memories of his career.

Well, notice, I already said it was football.

So we know it's a footballer who had a great career.

No, I can tell you now because I already said football, I already said it's Didier Roustan that we're going to have on the phone in an instant.

I loved Cyrano de Bergerac.

And in any case, in his book Didier Roustan, and that's my question, a question for Caroline Uche who lives clearly, do you remember who was sick, very sick, on July 12, 1998?

Yes, Ronaldo.

Sorry?

Ronaldo.

Well, you know that we don't care, we don't escape.

Well, listen, it's a good answer from Ian Watts.

It's Ronaldo.

But no, do you know why I know?

Go ahead.

Because it's the only thing I know in this field.

But how do you know that?

I don't know myself.

Hello Didier Roustan.

Hello Laurent, hello everyone.

We called, obviously, the circumstances in which we won this final.

It's in a chapter called the X-Fize result on the real frontier.

Basically, you tell us, well, you're right, we won, but we won because there were many circumstances, but that's often how it is.

By the way, many circumstances that we had to win that day.

And the biggest circumstance is maybe the fact that Ronaldo was very ill on July 12, 1998.

Can you remind us what happened to him?

He did a heart attack and his brother stopped fighting.

And at 2 o'clock in the afternoon or 3 o'clock in the afternoon,

he was at, I don't know, 20 minutes of pulse or something like that.

It was very serious.

But when I tell you that the planets between Guillemets were aligned for the French teams,

without removing them, a great merit, of course,

is on all along the competition.

In fact, there are signs like that.

But the luck was part of the talent.

It's part of the talent, but it's two days in football, in any case, fundamental.

It was less present than before.

And by the way, there is a chapter, a little ahead, which is called the unsustainable lightness of the result.

Except that you, during the World Cup in 1998, you weren't on a big TV radio channel.

You commented on sports at the World Cup. Is that good?

Yes, I was with my buddy Vigo.

That is to say that at that time, I was the general secretary of the World Cup,

of footballers, with Radona, Kanto Noe, etc.

I was no longer really a journalist.

And Yves asked me, for the World Cup, to participate in the commentaries of the matches on this radio.

So I did it voluntarily.

But I was quite far from all that.

Your book is called Puzzle, because it's not a classical autobiography.

It's classic.

You don't tell your life chronologically,

but you tell us different memories under different chapters

which don't necessarily have an order in terms of chronology of your life.

Yes, because I didn't want to do a biography.

I found that a little bit.

I was often asked, well, it's the last few years, by this heart.

And I said to myself, well, why not actually transmit a certain number of things?

There is a way to talk about 47 years of television.

Besides, it's not football, I think the book.

And by the way, some women who are not very football friends have read it,

and they loved it because I don't go back to the pure and hard things of football.

I think there are many people, there are meetings, there are trips,

there are illusions, illusions, fights too.

It was a 47-year journey.

So in this journey, there is someone you met.

And it obviously takes another allure today to talk about it

because when you wrote this chapter, you didn't imagine that it would no longer be this world.

And it turns out that today, in addition, well, that surprises me a little bit,

but finally, there is a French television that becomes Jean-Pierre and Cabache's house.

Well, personally, it's an inauguration that seems a little bit surprising to me,

but Jean-Pierre and Cabache are always there, manifestly.

They weren't interested in football when he was president of France Television.

Do you tell that in a chapter called Didier Qui?

Because you are in charge of commenting the final of the World Cup of Football

with Eric Cantona, by the way, at the time.

Exactly. And when Eric will sign his contract,

he asks for company with the president of France Television.

Well, I'm going. We are in the hall on a couch.

Jean-Pierre and Cabache pass quickly and say hello to Eric.

And then he tells me hello, sir,

while I was still the responsible footballer of his channel.

At the time, he was a PDG and France Television.

And he goes.

It's him, I trust you, it's him.

And yes, Eric says to me, but he doesn't know you.

I say, I think he doesn't recognize me, no, not at all.

And then I tell after the scene where at one point,

I enter the office of the president with Eric,

because Eric says, Didier can come too,

he says to your friend, yes, of course,

I thought I was the president of Antona.

I find that this story is so significant of the character.

There is not only sports, I can tell you.

He didn't know much outside of people who could be interested

to have a little more power in the political world.

But outside of that, this story doesn't surprise me.

And I find it terrible that we give his name to the house in France Television.

I think there are a lot of people from France Television

who are a bit outraged by that.

Well, yes, it's totally scandalous.

You have to remember that he was fired as president of France Television

for financial stories that were in trouble.

So really, it's absolutely incredible

that we give the name of Jean-Pierre El-Kabache

to the house in France Television.

That is to say, we will say, I put Jean-Pierre El-Kabache

when you go...

And Kabache 1, 2, and Kabache 3.

No, not yet.

Well, anyway, this hat made me happy,

to say at the time, because I think it falls to the point.

There are still people who give you homage in a more beautiful way.

Someone we called Mr. Basquette on television,

who was called Jean-Rénal, right?

Yes, Jean-Rénal has been my spiritual father.

You have to know that I entered ATF at the age of 18.

It was a little bit special.

But what was quite incredible afterwards

is that we quickly got big responsibilities.

And he was my protector.

It was a kind of spiritual father.

And so it's through this book,

it's a way of giving homage to people

who were very important to me.

Bernard Tapie, Dalgo, Platini...

Bernard Tapie was less important, but it was...

No, I give the names of those we find in your book.

And it's true that Bernard Tapie,

you are completely mistaken about him.

At the same time, we feel that, well,

of course, you never had, for just a reason,

maybe you really had trust in him.

By the way, he didn't necessarily have trust in you,

not anymore because he had understood

that he couldn't buy you, in fact, in a way.

Yes, in a way.

And as I was the boss of Telefute at the time,

who was sensitive to three channels,

it was important for him,

who was the president of OM,

to have me in his hand,

he never managed to do it,

so we had...

Difficult relationships.

Difficult relationships, but it was Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Reich,

but also on the attaching side,

and also one day, when I break the window

in the glass of a Marseille island,

where he will shoot me,

where he will be treated by

the doctor of the OM in the locker room,

where he will hurl at the wolf

because I go back alone after

conditioning my car,

and where he let himself be.

It was a pretty troubling person,

but you have to keep his distances

in relation to my job.

You can also tell the story of the World Cup,

of the players, the OM TV,

it's funny, you say,

when we belong to a channel,

the channel of a club,

it's not easy to say in the comments

of the bad, of the club for which we work,

and yet you manage to do it anyway,

if there is no penalty,

you have to say there is penalty anyway, because...

Yes, it was stronger than me.

I didn't want to be...

And it was a way of respecting the OM supporters

who were listening to the match,

I mean, to be honest.

After, it's sure that if

there were people who were coaches at the time

who were on certain things,

I wasn't going to underline it.

You had to find it,

and I didn't want to buy it on...

It's the number one, because you say it,

you write it, there may be a number two,

it's called Puzzle,

it's the beginning, we will say,

maybe of a collection that tells

the whole story of the long,

passionate career of Didier Roustan in football.

Thank you Didier, it was the book of the day.

Machine-generated transcript that may contain inaccuracies.