Franck Carlino
When did you meet Thierry
In January 1990, he was 14, and was looking for a place to train. At that time, I was playing and coaching in Marseille. The contact came from my racquet sponsor, who used to help Thierry.

What qualities did you notice immediately?
First of all, his polite manners and his kindness. Then his capacity to understand quickly the advice I could give, both on a squash level and on a schooling level. And also, he has a fighting spirit, speed qualities and already a real strategic sense in his game.




 What are his main faults from a technical point of view?
This question makes me smile. There are no faults, only points where performance could be improved...

Under pressure, Thierry can make errors when recovering on his backhand and reduce his attacks on the forehand, that it is more to do with his managing of rallies than actual technical faults. Technical errors at that level only come from a strategic point of view, or the pace of the game, and could be everywhere.

What can allow him to still improve ?
The pleasure to create the game, offensive alternatives, winning points. You must innovate to create turbulence in the others' game, make your own game more complex, therefore more tiring for your opponent. The answer is in the game itself and a player’s capability to find new solutions.

 On what is your coaching with him based ?
When we meet, we concentrate on?  strategy and tactical sense, we work on a court on exercises we discussed before the session. I try to help Thierry to keep his “gentleman’s soul”, as contrary to what some people are spreading, you don’t need to become a villain to become a champion! Thierry’s game integrates fighter and loyalty values, even if he was reproached for it…

We try to work on his capacity to find the best game solutions against his opponents, and maintain a certain level of concentration and determination to win whatever the difficulty of the match.

What could you tell Thierry again and again during the training sessions?
Stay focused on precision and don’t limit yourself in the creation of new solutions. And also thank you for being so determined in your work.

On a personal level, what are his best qualities?
He really listens to people, and sympathises with the others, whether they are opponents or not. Thierry is a true citizen of the world, and he loves people. Conflict is not part of his life.

His worst fault (or faults)?
He always wants to please everybody, and that’s sometimes harmful as he had to be sometimes protected from jealousy. But today, he is well armed against all that.
Otherwise, the lack of confidence he has in his own capacities, he keeps on discovering them result after result, and has problems anticipating them. That may have caused him a bit of delay in his career.

Three words to describe him...
Aestheticism, compassion, combativeness

A little anecdote ...
When Thierry was 17, we were in South Africa during a summer, and he played Chris Dittmar, at the time world number 2. When they finished, Thierry said that Chris was not as unattainable as he thought. And he was right! His performance had surprised more than one…

A personal note :
You have much more satisfactions to come, enjoy, you deserve them…

Franck Carlino