‘Ambitious’ Jean-Luc Vasseur wants time for Everton improvement

It is perhaps a testament to the increased expectations that come with a ramping up of interest in women’s football that Everton moved quickly to try to halt the team’s stuttering start by replacing the manager, Willie Kirk.

It is somewhat regrettable that managers will likely no longer be afforded time to build because results matter most. However, the broadcast rights deal and Barclays league sponsorship mean that being in the Women’s Super League is financially important and the man brought in to arrest Everton’s slide, Jean-Luc Vasseur, has a CV that suggests he can match the club’s European ambitions.

Vasseur took charge of Lyon in 2019 when they were European champions and presided over a treble-winning 2019-20 season but was sacked in April after the French side’s five-year run as Europe’s top team was ended by Paris Saint-Germain.

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The task in front of the 52-year-old at Everton is very different from the one he faced in Lyon. There, it could be argued that any manager would have won with the galáctico-style team assembled by the chairman, Jean-Michel Aulas. In France it was about maintaining success and managing a group of the world’s best players; on Merseyside he will be charged with guiding his team to the top. It will be a test. “The project, it is very ambitious,” he says of Everton’s attraction.

“The club tries to grow the team and to find the European competition in the future. It is very interesting. It is not the same [as] in Lyon as there is a team to grow and to make progress, so it’s very important for me.”

Everton sit eighth in the 12-team league having picked up two wins in five games. They were tipped as the club most likely to challenge Arsenal, Manchester City and Chelsea after a big summer of recruitment turned heads. For one reason or another, things haven’t clicked, but Vasseur has been impressed with what he has seen.

“There is a lot of talent in the training sessions and on the pitch,” he says. “There is a lot of youth talent too so it’s very interesting. I have a big mix. It’s a good basis to work on. I want to build the team to play in the future in the top three and to get a position in the European competition.”

Vasseur, speaking through an interpreter, is aware success will not be instant. “I know the high level so I know the way for Everton to progress and maybe to succeed and join the high level. It’s very, very hard. You need patience.”

However, he will need to turn things around relatively quickly to meet the demands of a club who dispatched Kirk even though he had lifted them from bottom of the table when he arrived in December 2018 to a fifth-place finish last season. “It’s necessary that all the players and team are ambitious,” Vasseur says. “Very ambitious.”

Helping him settle are the French players Valérie Gauvin and Kenza Dali and the England international Izzy Christiansen, who played for him at Lyon.

“The communication is 20% verbal and 80% with body language,” Vasseur said. “When I don’t find a way verbally, with my body language I speak very well. Sometimes I am looking for the word to translate and sometimes I ask Izzy, Kensa or Valérie to finish the word for me. But we arrived, I apologised for my English but like my team, I will improve. My team will improve [their] football and I will improve my English, so it’s an amazing project.”