And the Love Affair With Didier Deschamps Comes to An Abrupt End…

By: Sarah | September 27th, 2009

Deschamps Cracks

While there have been Didier Deschamps skeptics on The Offside since Day 1, the French media has basically been showering him with love and kisses since the day he was hired. Evey time time they mention him, they immediately reference his Champion’s League and World Cup glory days. The media became infatuated with the idea that Deschamps will be another Blanc– an old France favorite that would become an amazing coach and lead OM back to victory.

Today, however, this has changed. Today’s media headlines are questioning Deschamps ability to both motivate and strategically coach his team.

To be honest, I don’t think DD has helped his case much in the past few days. For example, in the days before OM’s game with Valencienne, DD admitted that he was having trouble getting the team to focus on this week’s Ligue game because they were facing Real on Wednesday. In a different interview with The Phoceen, he remarked that he understood why players didn’t want to give 100% against teams that “look easy on paper” and that is “human” to be thinking of the Real game instead of the Ligue game against the Valenciennes.

After the game in which OM had the chance to lead twice, Deschamps didn’t take any responsibility for the errors. He insisted that he “wouldn’t do anything differently,” and blamed the players for “leaving too much space” and “not doing what he is entitled to expect from his team.” His critics, however, are now pointing to his bizarre tactical decisions. Deschamps wants to compose his team in a 4-3-3 to complement Lucho. To do this, he has pushed Brandao to the left, placed Morientes in the center and made Niang play on the right. Strange decisions since Niang prefers to touch the ball from the left and Brandao likes to move through the middle. These decisions are even more bizarre considering that Ben Arfa, whom Deschamps praised tremendously during the week, was left on the bench. HBA is an amazing right midfielder, and no one understands why the man who DD says “looks like a different player” was left on the bench for so long in the second half.

The papers are now claiming that Deschamps is creating his strategic plan of the 4-3-3 without any regard to the types of players on his team.

These offensive errors are in addition to the sinking defensive ship that was on display this week, which Deschamps did nothing to prevent. For on that, read my post on this week’s biggest tops and flops.

But, while I remain suspicious and cynical of Deschamp’s choices, let’s try to keep things in perspective. This was only our first loss in the Ligue….not too shabby. We remain in 3rd place. Let’s hope that Taiwo and M’bia (both had knocks to their knees) are able to return to the team by Wednesday as planned. With or without them, we have some serious work to do on both sides of the pitch if we don’t want to embarrass ourselves at the Bernabeu on Wednesday.