‘I’m Leaving, Goodbye’: Lyon Manager Laurent Blanc Storms Out of His Press Conference
Lyon manager Laurent Blanc stormed out of his pre-match press conference after being irked by questions about the club’s January transfer business.
As reported by Daily Mail, the former France boss initially looked to sweep aside any transfer related questions in his Troyes pre-match press conference.
But it didn’t quite work and in the end Blanc smiled back at the questions and gave an indication to the media that he would leave if they did not change the topic.
The former Bordeaux and PSG manager did exactly that 10 minutes later when a question about the upcoming match finally came up.
His actions lamented that it had taken too long for the subject to come up and he was not pleased.
‘Is it good? I see you and you have no more questions to ask. I’m leaving. Goodbye,’ Blanc said when getting up.
‘No, but it’s you who decides to talking about Troyes after ten minutes… So thank you and goodbye.’
That followed his initial comments stating: ‘The transfer window is over and we have the squad that will end the season.
‘We will work and the players will not change. We already had a transfer window press conference so don’t keep talking to me about the transfer window now. Let’s talk about something else.’
The Ligue 1 outfit captured the signatures of Dejan Lovren, Jeffinho and Amin Sarr during the transfer window, although they did see six players depart.
One of those departures was full-back Malo Gusto joining Premier League side Chelsea for £26.3million.
However, the France under-21 international will stay on loan with Lyon for the remainder of the 2022-2023 season.
They also let Karl Toko Ekambi and Romain Faivre go out loan to league rivals Rennes and LOrient respectively among others heading out.
This is not the first time Blanc has threatened to leave a press conference, as he also did similar when he was PSG boss back in 2015 after being quizzed about the effect of the Paris terror attacks on his players.
He said: ‘We’re not going to talk about this during the whole press conference, because I guarantee you, if you ask me one more question about the context, I’ll leave.’
Lyon, who currently sit 10th in Ligue 1, will take on strugglers Troyes this evening as they bid to start climbing up the league table in the second half of the season.
