{"id":665265,"date":"2026-05-26T03:15:08","date_gmt":"2026-05-26T03:15:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/665265\/"},"modified":"2026-05-26T03:15:08","modified_gmt":"2026-05-26T03:15:08","slug":"quietly-ruthless-regis-le-bris-ready-to-lead-revived-sunderland-into-europa-league-sunderland","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/665265\/","title":{"rendered":"Quietly ruthless R\u00e9gis Le Bris ready to lead revived Sunderland into Europa League | Sunderland"},"content":{"rendered":"

One of R\u00e9gis Le Bris\u2019s first acts as Sunderland<\/a> head coach was to preside over a pre-season training camp near Alicante. It was July 2024 and, according to those present, the Breton sometimes cut a slightly isolated figure.<\/p>\n

\u201cI arrived alone, without any collaborators,\u201d Le Bris said, reflecting on his leap of faith that involved exchanging the familiarity of Lorient for a job that, initially,\u00a0meant working with Sunderland\u2019s existing backroom team rather than bringing hand-picked assistants.<\/p>\n

The coach who ended last season with a Championship playoff final victory<\/a> and, a year later to the day, led Sunderland into the Europa League was playing a longer game.<\/p>\n

\u201cStep by step I started to express my ideas and my concepts,\u201d he said. Slowly but surely he also began to establish a power base.<\/p>\n

Le Bris went unrecognised when, shortly before taking charge at the Stadium of Light, he slipped into the back of a lecture room where the club historian, Rob Mason, was recounting the team\u2019s sometimes illustrious past. But within six months Le Bris would be serving as a magnet, his unshowy pulling\u00a0power attracting some of football\u2019s brightest emerging\u00a0talents.<\/p>\n

Everything changed in January\u00a02025. Sunderland\u2019s inexperienced side were pushing for automatic promotion and, unusually, the owner, Kyril Louis-Dreyfus, allowed Le Bris rather than the then sporting director, Kristjaan Speakman, to take the lead on\u00a0pursuing a statement\u00a0signing.<\/p>\n

Le Bris had first coached Enzo Le F\u00e9e as a 12-year-old in Lorient\u2019s academy and knew the playmaker\u2019s recent transfer, to Roma, was not working out. With Le F\u00e9e receptive to a loan, Louis-Dreyfus and Speakman began talking to Florent Ghisolfi, then Roma\u2019s sporting director.<\/p>\n

Ghisolfi was gaining a reputation as a shrewd, well-connected recruitment specialist, with his work at Lens and Nice seen as highly impressive. What went under the radar was that Ghisolfi\u00a0had worked with Le Bris at Lorient and had tried to lure him to\u00a0Nice.<\/p>\n

Louis-Dreyfus and Ghisolfi bonded and the idea of the latter moving to Sunderland as football director no longer seemed ridiculous. Sure enough he arrived last July, partnering with Speakman to sign 15 players, including Le F\u00e9e, whose assists would help to clinch\u00a0promotion.<\/p>\n

Enzo Le Fee played a major part in Sunderland finishing seventh in the Premier League. Photograph: David Klein\/Reuters<\/p>\n

The presence of Le F\u00e9e and Ghisolfi ensured that when Louis-Dreyfus called Granit Xhaka out of the blue last summer, as the Switzerland captain was preparing for bed, the midfielder did not immediately cut the call.<\/p>\n

It helped that Louis-Dreyfus is Swiss-French and knew Xhaka slightly through mutual acquaintances in Basel, but Xhaka needed a little more convincing. Not that it took long for him to decide that swapping Bayer Leverkusen for a club managed by a coach who reminded him of his old Arsenal boss, Ars\u00e8ne Wenger, and serious enough to have acquired Le F\u00e9e and Ghisolfi, was an exchange worth\u00a0making.<\/p>\n

Sunderland\u2019s long-serving club captain, Luke O\u2019Nien \u2013 who joined in the League One days and now helps Xhaka run the dressing room, takes up the story. \u201cI always say\u00a0Enzo was the catalyst for all this. He was the first top player to trust us as a club and he\u2019s made a big contribution to where we are\u00a0today.<\/p>\n

\u201cEnzo works so hard, he\u2019s unbelievably humble and, as good a player as he is, he\u2019s an even better person.\u201d<\/p>\n

The same could be said of Xhaka. In a recent interview with the Guardian <\/a>Le F\u00e9e said: \u201cGranit\u2019s arrival changed everything.\u201d<\/p>\n

Significantly, Xhaka played a key role in persuading one of Sunderland\u2019s most influential players of this season, the former Paris Saint-Germain defender Nordi Mukiele, to join. The pair had played together at Leverkusen and Mukiele said: \u201cWhen Granit speaks you have to hear with both ears.\u201d<\/p>\n

With last summer\u2019s \u00a3155m investment in, among others, Robin Roefs, Noah Sadiki, Habib Diarra, Omar Alderete, Reinildo, Chemsdine Talbi and Brian Brobbey paying rich dividends, Sunderland reached Le Bris\u2019s pre-season target of 40 points with a win at Leeds <\/a>in early March and finished seventh.<\/p>\n

In February, Speakman left, amicably if not exactly willingly, as it became clear Ghisolfi\u2019s arrival had made a large part of his role redundant.<\/p>\n

R\u00e9gis Le Bris arrived in Sunderland to little fanfare but has transformed the club\u2019s fortunes. Photograph: Lee Smith\/Action Images\/Reuters<\/p>\n

Other high-profile executive exits followed, prompting erroneous suggestions Le Bris could be next. In reality the coach who arrived \u201cwithout collaborators\u201d had built an on- and off-field support network the envy of many Premier League peers.<\/p>\n

Now, a man whose natural courtesy and gentle humour are said to conceal a capacity to be ruthless when necessary, faces twin tasks. He must nurture his power base and a tightly bonded dressing room with the demands of playing European football on Thursday\u00a0nights.<\/p>\n

Xhaka, though, harbours few fears. \u201cAs Sunderland\u2019s captain I can promise you this is the just the beginning,\u201d he said. \u201cWe want\u00a0more.\u201d<\/p>\n

Le Bris, sensibly, talks of the need to \u201cstay humble\u201d and remember the essential \u201cfragility\u201d of footballing success, but he is also justifiably proud. \u201cThis club is a special place in English football and our journey is really special because we feel the connection, the alignment with our fans,\u201d he says. \u201cIt\u2019s a really nice feeling.\u201d<\/p>\n

The polite, unassuming Frenchman who spent his first two weeks in charge of Sunderland unnoticed by fellow guests at a County Durham hotel no longer walks alone on Wearside.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"One of R\u00e9gis Le Bris\u2019s first acts as Sunderland head coach was to preside over a pre-season training…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":665266,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[69],"tags":[403,99],"class_list":["post-665265","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-soccer","tag-soccer","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/665265","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=665265"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/665265\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/665266"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=665265"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=665265"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=665265"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}