Marseille 2-1 PSG, Master of our domain…

By: Magnusson | February 18th, 2008

How long this match was! It took an eternity for us to win this game. The tension was at its highest when Alain Cayzac stepped on the pitch to go salute his supporters. I diddn’t see a provocation there but apparently everyone else did. Oh well!
So the match started with some kind of 4-2-3-1 that Eric Gerets seems to want as a second or third option. The defense being the same as announced with Taïwo, Givet, Cana and Bonnart from left to tight. Kaboré and Cheyrou in the midfield. Valbuena all the way to the right, Niang on the left, Nasri just behind Cissé. The game started and it showed pretty soon that we were not yet accustomed to that tactic and Paris took charge as soon as the whistle blew. It could have been a mistake to start Kaboré at Cana ’s position so early in the game and so early in his career in THIS game of all. He’s just 20 and it showed. It took him half an hour to get into the game and it could have cost us points. But he woke up and rose to the occasion.
The parisian domination was obvious, but Marseille seemed so out of it that we needed something to get us in and the penalty was just that. The term penalty is maybe as generous as the call itself. There was no foul and it happened outside the box. So it came as a shock to see the referee Bertrand Layec be so certain of his decision. Some people are still surprised there won’t be any french referees at the Euro. You can easily understand why captain Lorik Cana was losing his mind in the box.Anyway, Jérome Rothen hit it twice and twice, the penalty was shot perfectly.

That penalty got us in the match, finally! It took 30 minutes but we finally got there. Paris started backing up and Marseille started looking like they did earlier this week. The reaction came pretty quickly. On a Samir Nasri free-kick, Taye Taïwo takes advantage of a Mickaël Landreau mistake to powerfully head the ball inside the net. It is a perfect week for Taïwo who scores his second header in as many games. The Afcon was more than benefic for the young nigerian. Landreau has been criticized recently and is understandably shook but in the direct opposition for a spot on the French National Team, Steve Mandanda scored a lot of points for himself last night.

After that equalizer, the very positive thing is that we kept attacking and less than five minutes later, on a perfect service by Mathieu Valbuena, Player of the Month Mamadou Niang fixes the parisian defense and strikes Mickaël landreau with a left footer that had the whole stadium, Franck Ribéry included, on their toes.

After half-time, Marseille came back with firm intentions to kill the match but a lot of approximations and maybe some tired players made it hard to be accurate in the penalty area. Niang and Cissé both were disappointing in the second half but the truth is Paris was only dangerous in counter attacks. Steve Mandanda once again saved the day more times than we can count, notably after Pauleta came on rather late in the game.
Eric Gerets was smart enough to put Akalé, Grandin and then Zenden in to make sure the result was preserved and Djibril Cissé could have killed the game once and for all at the 87th minute if not for a little bump that made him miss the unmissable. Djibril should have been able to score and he deserved to , given his efforts. BUt the win was the most important thing, no matter the way.
These points allow uis to be three points away from nancy and for the first time this season, we can talk about qualifying for the next Champions league. Let’s see how it goes.