Interview: Wine grower "Joe" ends time-out from football

Fashion label, art gallery or vineyard? Johan Micoud had realised the latter idea just after the end of his career.
First Team
Thursday, 26.03.2009 / 10:46

Johan Micoud was in his former home Bremen for two days. On his schedule was meeting friends, recalling memories and a long talk with WERDER.DE...

Johan Micoud was in his former home Bremen for two days. On his schedule was meeting friends, recalling memories and a long talk with WERDER.DE.

 

werder.de: Joe, we hardly can imagine you not standing on the pitch anymore - no more majestic passes. Did you really hang them up?

 

Micoud: Yeah, that's it. Last June I ended my career. But no one needs to worry. I really enjoyed the break from football for the first few months. It's like I'm leading a new life. Now I can be with my children more and I know when they have holidays. I enjoy the free time and everything is great.

 

If someone had asked me what you would do after your career, I would have come up with three things - you would buy a vineyard, start a fashion label or open an art gallery.

 

Micoud:(Laughing) Oh, you don't need to guess which one of them came true. I now own a vineyard in Pomerol and am trying to come up with a really good wine with my friends. In October, we had our first vintage. That was a new experience for me. I really followed everything really closely and was a part of it all.

 

Does that mean we can picture wine grower Johan Micoud with a big slouch hat, rubber boots and pruning shears? Someone who picks the vines and then stomps on the grapes?

 

Micoud: Yeah, yeah, just about so. We have a small plot but I really am there for everything. I know exactly how easy it is to cut your fingers when you're picking the vines. You really have to watch out. I am there for the entire production all the way until pouring it into the oak barrels. And of course I was at our first wine tasting a couple of weeks ago. We were pleasantly surprised. It is a good quality.

 

Do you live directly on the vineyard in an old romantic stone house like you see in the movies?

 

Micoud: No, the plot is smaller than you think. There is no house on it. It's all starting up. We want to grow slowly. But it's not so easy. The Pomerol wine growing area is pretty much fully developed already. There is not a lot of new space to build something. Everything is basically inherited. We came into a situation where there was a plot available after a death and we jumped at it. It's about 50 kilometres from Bordeaux. Werder physiotherapist Holger Berger should know all about it. As far as I can remember, he knows every red wine area in the world.

 

Is this time without football only a timeout or a complete break? Will you ever return? As a club official, coach or even as a referee?

 

Micoud: It was a timeout. I needed these five or six months just to shut down and do something totally different. And it really did me good. Now I have a new outlook on things and am watching games again. I follow Girondins Bordeaux very intensively but watch some other games as well. It is fun again to be part of it all. The perspective I see fitting me would be as a player's agent. I know that takes a lot of time before you get established. But I just want to pass my knowledge of the game on to young players. And I would like to help someone with odd transfer. All that should be part of a serious business which I will put together.

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