Former France and PSG manager Laurent Blanc has been appointed as the new head coach of Saudi Arabian champions Al-Ittihad.
The 58-year-old replaces Argentine Marcelo Gallardo at the helm of the Jeddah club, which pipped Cristiano Ronaldo to the Saudi Pro League title last season.
Welcome to Al-Ittihad, Coach Laurent Blanc 🤝🟡⚫️ pic.twitter.com/UdBm7gB1lE
— Ittihad Club (@ittihad_en) July 13, 2024
Blanc inherits a squad with Karim Benzema and N’Golo Kante in it and is expected to make former France and now Algerian international Houssem Aouar – who played under Blanc at Lyon – his first signing in a deal worth around £10m from Roma.
Blanc won 97 caps for Les Bleus as a player and won the 1998 World Cup on home soil as well as Euro 2000 in Holland and Belgium.
After ending his playing career at Man United in 2008, he began his managerial career at Bordeaux in 2007, finishing second in his first season and then winning Ligue Un in his second, and was appointed France boss in 2010.
Blanc guided France to the last-eight at Euro 2012 but went out 2-0 against Spain which ended his reign and ushered in the Didier Deschamps era.
Blanc took over at PSG in 2013 and won the league and cup double, plus the charity shield, in his first and the league plus both domestic cups in his second and third seasons. Despite the success, PSG’s failure to progress beyond the quarter-finals of the Champions League in each season saw pressure build on Blanc and he left in 2016.
After a break from the game he had an unsuccessful 14 month spell at Qatari club Al-Rayyan and then lasted less than a year at Lyon, being sacked last September after a nightmare start to the season, losing three of their first four matches to lie bottom of Ligue Un.
