Toulouse Football Club has been ordered to pay former head coach Patrice Garande 345,000 euros in damages, after a French appeals court ruled the club failed to prove the serious misconduct it cited when sacking him in 2021.
The Toulouse Court of Appeal issued the ruling on 18 June 2026, as first reported by the French sports daily L'Equipe. Garande, who is from Normandy and now works as a radio pundit, coached Toulouse for a single season, 2020-21, before being dismissed after the club failed to win promotion back to Ligue 1.
Dismissal letter accused Garande of harassment
L'Equipe reported that it had reviewed the dismissal letter, signed by club president Damien Comolli, which accused Garande of a contemptuous, abusive and discriminatory attitude amounting to moral harassment capable of harming the physical integrity of staff. Garande contested the claim, arguing that the real reasons for his departure were purely sporting.
His lawyer, Denis Rouanet, argued that the club needed to establish serious misconduct in order to justify ending Garande's contract before it expired.
Court finds no evidence for the claims
The appeals court concluded that Toulouse had not produced evidence to back up the accusations made in the dismissal letter. It ordered the club to pay Garande 345,000 euros in compensation, plus 68,000 euros in interest.
Garande, who previously coached Caen, had sought double that sum. The court rejected the 180,000 euros he had claimed for moral damages, as well as the 112,000 euros he had sought over what he described as a lost chance to receive performance and promotion bonuses for the 2021-22 season.
Garande described depression after leaving Toulouse
In an interview with La Depeche in February, Garande said he had struggled to come to terms with his time at Toulouse and that the effects had still not fully faded. He described a general sense of malaise that was both psychological and physical.
In earlier comments, made while the legal proceedings were still under way and which he did not want to expand on at the time, Garande said the wound from his departure had not healed. He pointed to how he had been let go, with Comolli releasing him a year before his contract was due to end, and to the pitch itself, saying he remained convinced Toulouse should have gone up via the playoffs. He added that otherwise, his time at the club had been brilliant.
A difficult first season under RedBird
Garande was the first coach of the RedBird ownership era at Toulouse, arriving in the summer of 2020 shortly after the American investment firm RedBird Capital Partners took control of the club, which also owns AC Milan. He led Toulouse to third place in Ligue 2 in a season disrupted by the Covid-19 pandemic, much of it played in empty stadiums under restrictions.
That third-place finish sent Toulouse into the promotion playoffs, known in France as the barrages, where they faced Nantes over two legs. Toulouse could not beat the Canaris and missed out on an immediate return to Ligue 1. The club did go on to win the Ligue 2 title and promotion the following season, and later lifted the Coupe de France in 2023.
Garande went on to coach Dijon in Ligue 2, a spell that also ended before the end of a season, according to a report on the move.
