If he were to take out OM in the Coupe de France with AS Saint-Étienne this Sunday, it would not be a first for Brice Maubleu. Ten years ago, the Saint-Etienne goalkeeper achieved a resounding feat with Grenoble Foot 38 against Marseille.
Almost ten years ago, Grenoble, then in National 2, hosted Olympique de Marseille in the Coupe de France. At the end of a crazy match, the Grenoblois knocked the Olympians out of the competition on penalties. A match well remembered Brice Maubleuwho had seen it from the sidelines of the GF38: “My memories of the Coupe de France? Exactly ten years ago we took out Marseille from Bielsa. We were in National 2 with Grenoble and OM were first in Ligue 1 at the time. We made it three everywhere and took them out on penalties. Why not relive the same thing. I have some good memories in the Coupe de France, yes. We had to go through penalties. It was quite an achievement.“
A feat that he would like to repeat with the green jersey on his shoulders this time, still against OM this afternoon. And why not on penalties: “Take OM to penalties? It's not the ideal scenario, but the objective is to go through, if we have to go through this to go to the next round, we will go. (…) We rarely do specific shots on goal in training, I don't know if it's planned this afternoon (Saturday, editor's note). We do it sometimes during the week but then it's not the same pressure in training as in matches.“
Laurent Huard confided yesterday afternoon that it would be Brice Maubleu who would keep the ASSE goals against OM this afternoon. Quite a baptism of fire for the Saint-Etienne goalkeeper who wants to take his team to the next round: “When we come here, it's to play matches like this, in a legendary stadium. When playing OM two weeks ago, we saw that they were well above us in that match, but we won't want to play the same match. The objective is to pass this round by qualifying. (…) Excitement? Yes because it's been a while since I played a big match in a big stadium, the last one was last year with another jersey (that of Grenoble against ASSE in Ligue 2, editor’s note). I'm happy to play but I'm focused on my match. I'm a fairly calm person, excitement is good but you have to know how to manage it and I know how to do that. (…) Marseille as a baptism of fire? Obviously, we say to ourselves that it will be difficult, I think there were 20 shots against us in the last match (21, editor's note) but we also worked to avoid that, I know there will be work but cup matches are different.”
