Since Galthié took over as head coach in 2020, the mercurial French have cast aside their reputation for inconsistency, amassing an impressive tally of 33 wins out of 41 games, including a Six Nations Grand Slam in 2022.
Les Bleus are widely expected to make it 34 wins when they take on Namibia at Marseille’s Vélodrome stadium on Thursday in their third pool game at the World Cup. But the manner of their victory will be closely scrutinised a week after their laborious win over Uruguay prompted boos and whistles from the home crowd in Lille.
Galthié, whose squad against Uruguay featured only three players from the dazzling team that saw off New Zealand in the tournament’s curtain raiser, summoned Charles Darwin to explain France’s two-faced performance.
Throughout his career as player and coach, Galthié has earned a reputation as both a brilliant strategist and a fierce, iron-willed competitor – as unbreakable as the plastic-frame glasses with thick lenses that have become his trademark accessory.
A perfectionist, the French coach has succeeded in maximising his players’ strengths and stamping out their flaws, his impressive run of wins with Les Bleus vindicating a style critics have sometimes described as abrasive.
Both on and off the pitch, Galthié has a track record of snapping players back into line. His former teammate Mathieu Blin recalls frequent run-ins with the scrum-half when they started training together in 2001 at Stade Français, the Paris outfit Galthié joined in 2001 after 15 years of loyal service with small-town club Colomiers.
“We would get into spats on the pitch because of the way he spoke to me,” said Blin. “But he actually liked it when people answered back. It was his way of testing his teammates.”
