Luka Elsner could give his first minutes of the season in Ligue 1 to Gabriel Moscardo this Saturday during the Reims/OL match, but not necessarily as a defensive midfielder.
Loaned last summer to Reims by PSG, Gabriel Moscardo has still not played a single minute in Ligue 1 this season. The 19-year-old Brazilian defensive midfielder had physical problems at the start of the season and has suffered from competition within the Reims midfielder since his return to the group a month ago.
Having remained on the bench against Auxerre, Brest, Toulouse and Le Havre, will Moscardo finally come off this Saturday during the match of the 12th day of Ligue 1 between Reims and OL? It's possible since Moscardo took advantage of the international break to finally play with Reims, in a friendly, against a Belgian D3.
Aligned as a defensive midfielder in a 4-3-3, Moscardo played 65 minutes and scored his team's first goal on a penalty that he himself had caused. In today's edition, L'Equipe looks back at Moscardo's start to the season in Reims and confirms that he could finally start against Lyon on Saturday.
Moscardo relay player rather than defensive midfielder in Reims?
The sports daily also had Luka Elsner, who made an interesting little confession about his future use of Moscardo: “I saw him very fixed on the sentry position, but due to his progress in training, it seems to me that he will express his qualities more easily in the last third of the field”confided the Slovenian coach.
Alternately using a double pivot or a three-way midfield with a low point, Elsner could therefore be led to use the Brazilian in a relay midfield position, which will perhaps offer him more minutes since the French international hopefuls Valentin Atangana realizes a big start to the season and is often aligned in front of the defense.
Seeing Moscardo evolve in a more offensive role will be interesting to observe since he has exclusively played low point since the start of his career and in Brazil, some even imagined him going down a notch in the long term rather than playing higher on the land.
