“Olympique de Marseille, for me, is like an old love. It’s a place where I was loved a lot. I really liked this city, this club“, admitted without false modesty Jorge Sampaoli at a press conference on Thursday, while the Stade Rennais technician was preparing to face OM on Saturday. From the end of February 2021 to the summer of 2022, this sporting idyll had brought Marseille to the 2nd place in the championship and a semi-final in the Europa Conference League.
The unexpected breakup a year before the end of his contract, against a backdrop of divergent ambitions, has damaged neither his popularity with Marseille supporters nor the memory he has of this season and a half. “Life goes on and today he’s my opponent“, however, he quickly brushed aside, aware that there will be no room for nostalgia on Saturday, facing the best away team in the championship with seven victories in eight away games.
OM “is one of the best teams in the championship, a team which has been very well organized from the start of the season, with the work of the coach but also the president. A team which has ambitions for the coming years” , underlined the Argentinian.
An extremely demanding match
“It will certainly be an extremely demanding match” for the Rennais, he added. Even if he was finally able to work over time with an almost complete squad during the break, this match undoubtedly arrives a little early for his taste. During the defeat in Nice (3-2), largely due to individual errors, his team developed some good collective sequences.
Jorge Sampaoli, the former coach of OM.
Credit: Getty Images
“There was definitely a lot of time to prepare for Nice. I think it showed on certain things during the match“, estimated Ludovic Blas. “There were a lot of movements during that match, up front. We managed to pose problems for this defense on the calls of ‘Kali’ (Arnaud Kalimuendo, editor’s note) in depth, on my stalls, so these are things (…) that we must be careful aboutr,” he detailed.
The equalizer at 1-1 came from a very nice opening from Blas for Kalimuendo, the 6th assist from the attacking midfielder, the best passer in the championship. “Afterwards, the most difficult thing is to repeat these efforts (…) In matches against big teams like that, that’s where you have to repeat (them), even when you don’t have the ball, to create spaces and (be) dangerous“, he continued.
Samba-OM reunion
The identity of the adversary is even completely secondary, according to Blas. “The most important thing is us and our level of requirement and our concentration, especially“, he insisted. And if Seko Fofana, the first winter recruit of the Bretons, had played his first half hour in Nice under his new colors, Brice Samba could find his former Marseille teammates on Saturday if he is established with Rennes where he arrived on Wednesday.
Sampaoli still recalled that Samba had not played for a month and was mixed about Fofana’s debut. “If we made the decision to bring him in even though he doesn’t know the team very well, it’s because he brings something extra in terms of energy and he has this ability to transmit his energy.“, explained Sampaoli.
“But on this part (…) he moved a lot (on the field) and it’s not very good for us and for our defensive replacement“, regretted the technician. Ultimately, he plans to use Fofana near the opposing goal, or even as a second attacker. “They are very good playersunderlined the coach about Samba and Fofana. JI hope in the short term, but I am sure in the medium term, that they will be players who will bring us a lot“.
