When Patrick Videira returns to the Parc des Princes on Saturday night, the touchline will bring back more than football memories. The Le Mans coach first knew the stadium as a PSG academy midfielder in 1995, spending eight long nights under its lights for Alain Chabat’s film Didier.
Key takeaways
- Le Mans manager Patrick Videira will face Paris Saint-Germain at the Parc des Princes on Saturday, with kick-off set for 20:45.
- Videira appeared in the 1995 Alain Chabat film Didier while completing his development at PSG.
- He played José Gioto, the No. 6 in Chabat’s fictional side during its match against Paris.
- The young players filmed overnight from 20:00 until 08:00 and slept on camp beds in the stadium dressing rooms between takes.
- Videira’s son Lenny, a Le Mans reserve player who trains with the senior squad, knows his father’s brief line from the film by heart.
A return shaped by a different kind of night shift
Videira was one of several players from the PSG youth system called in to help create the football scenes for Didier, which went on to draw 2.9 million cinema admissions. Djamel Belmadi, Sylvain Distin and Grégory Paisley were also among the young footballers visible on screen.
His role was small but memorable. As José Gioto, he is heard raising his voice in the dressing room and blaming another player: “It is because of him as well.” Videira now believes he was given the line partly because his voice carried, perhaps also because he already had the instincts of a leader.
The filming schedule was punishing. Some individual scenes took between an hour and an hour and a half to complete, leaving the teenage players caught in a routine of filming, eating and sleeping through the night before having to continue the next day.
“We had camp beds set up in the Parc dressing rooms so that we could sleep between scenes,” Videira recalled. “When I watch it again now, I realise just how young I was.”
Chabat’s warmth, and a costly 4-0 defeat
Despite the exhaustion, Videira remembers the production with affection and describes Chabat as remarkably down to earth. The film has remained a family reference point, with 20-year-old Lenny familiar with his father’s moment on screen.
There was, however, a footballing consequence to those sleepless shifts. Videira’s side had been top of their league before one weekend match, but the accumulated fatigue caught up with them.
“We were like zombies,” he said, recalling a 4-0 defeat after the run of overnight work.
More than three decades later, the former PSG trainee will walk onto the same turf in a very different role. This time, with Le Mans in his technical area and the European champions waiting across the pitch, the Parc will be a place of competition rather than cameras.
