While both have progressed from playing to coaching, their rises to the top of Caledonian football have come via two very different paths.
As a player Moizan, 59, achieved seven international caps with France and a division one title and Coupe de France triumph with his club side AS Monaco.
His coaching resume includes leading the New Caledonia national side to the 2012 OFC Nations Cup final as well as stints in charge of club sides SC Bastia and Lyon La Duchère and the Mauritania and Mali national squads.
While at Bastia, Moizan was in a player-coach position and says there was a moment when he no longer wanted to follow a career in coaching but his love of the game drew him back in.
Toulon native Sardo, 45, played in the Division d’Honneur in his home country – the equivalent of the sixth division – but his rise in the coaching world has much humbler beginnings than his counterpart’s.
“My daughter wanted to play football so I started by training at the grassroots level in La Valette, near Toulon,” the former goalkeeper says.
“Then I had a bit of luck, there was a call for offers to train the National Police team in the Mediterranean League and I was hired.”
However he says he felt the same as Moizan about leaving a playing career behind to focus on coaching.
“When you have been a player it is difficult to completely cut those ties,” Sardo says.
“It allows you to remain in the middle of things. And I’ve always been a leader, in fact, it comes naturally to me.”
The pair have been working together since Moizan’s appointment as head coach of Les Cagous.
“We already knew each other but we got better acquainted when at the Nations Cup in the Solomon Islands,” Moizan says.
“Our relationship goes a little further than just that of coaches. Each of us has our own prerogative, he doesn’t encroach on my domain and I have complete confidence in him because his role with the goalkeepers is very specific.”
Moizan’s Magenta and Sardo’s Lössi currently occupy the top two places in the Super Ligue and the two sides will be fighting for more than just the honour of winning the Coupe de Calédonie tomorrow.
As an extra incentive, the winner will go on to the seventh round of the Coupe de France which involves a match-up against fourth division side French side FC Mulhouse on November 17.
A win for Lössi would see the trophy remain on Lifou after the success of Gaitcha last year.
But having won it only once before in 2007, the statistics weigh heavily in Magenta’s favour with the club having lifted the cup 13 times, the last one being in 2010.
For more on New Caledonia football go to www.fedcalfoot.com

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