On the eve of the 2006 World Football Championship, the much mediatised Guy Roux, trainer of the famous AJ Auxerre football team for forty years, tells all!

The man who raised, in the broadest and noblest sense of the word, the AJ Auxerre club to the summit of the football hierarchy reveals his methods, his formulas, his knowledge—in a word, his system. The Roux system, equally fascinating to players and spectators alike, is a combination of hard work, intelligence and cleverness, culture and memory. Nothing is overlooked here, beginning with his childhood as the son of poor peasants and his engagement at twenty-two as player and coach of AJ Auxerre. From his first challenges in the upper echelons of European competition, we follow him all the way to the first autograph requests at the finals of the Coupe de France in 1979 and his present glory. He tells us how he recruits and trains the finest football talents, all the better to sell them, and of his merciless defence of his club. This is a book that is full of great stories, about his encounters with important politicians and his complicity with lifelong friends who share his Burgundian background, about his outspokenness and his unconventional views, and about the image he cultivates of his solid peasant roots. It also provides some surprising revelations of his perception of money, the media, and publicity. With half a century on the turf, Guy Roux has broken all records of longevity. And, amazing and unusual, he has stayed at the head of the same team. The story he tells is inimitably his own, that of football and that of his life. An exceptional document.