Marseille comes back home….

By: Magnusson | August 18th, 2007

The group for tomorrow’s game against Nancy has been officially announced and we get some good news:

Keepers: Carrasso, Mandanda
Defenders: Beye, Bonnart, Givet, Rodriguez, Taiwo, Zubar
Midfielders: Cana, Cheyrou, M’Bami, Oruma, Zenden, Ziani, Valbuena, Nasri
Strikers: Niang, Moussilou, Ayew, Cissé

The reception of Nancy at the Vélodrome will certainly be the first occasion to see new recruit Matt Moussilou dressed in the whitre uniform. After two rough years split between Nice and Saint-Etienne where he only scored three goals last year before being completely outshined by the kid Bafe Gomis, the Lille alum hopes to bounce back in the toughest city of them all and will have the difficult task to acllimate himself to the very peculiar environment while being efficient on the field. Thankfully for him and for us all, he’ll be able to lean on Samir Nasri who seems fit to play at least another half while Mamadou Niang’s recovery is a lot more iffy. Samir’s skills will definitly be needed to show our strikers the right way towards our goals.

Now Nancy’s the biggest surprise of this season. Well to be fair the second surprise if you look at Le Mans. They have taken 9 points out of 9 and scored five goals (by five different players). With only one big arrival this season in the argentinian Macaluso from River Plate and their best player of the last three years (Pape Malickou Diakhaté) leaving the club, nobody was expecting them to be this impressive. Pablo Correa’s boys showed three impressive efforts filled with team chemistry and youth spirit. They showed something as interesting as their run last year when they nearly qualified for the second round of the UEFA Cup.

If Marseille wants to win tomorrow, they’ll have to rely on something other than their will and motivation. They’ll have to show the same kind of playing that helped them challenge Bordeaux and Toulouse during the pre-season. The only satisfaction of this team so far is Laurent Bonnard. Zenden has not been physically up to par yet but that’s explainable. So is Cissé’s lack of efficiency. He’s been too lonely at the forefront to create any real danger and that should change very quickly. Our captain has been receiving a lot of undeserved criticism since the beginning of the season but everybody forgets he played all of last season hurt. I’m still believing in that team no matter what. All we need is our first victory and people will lay off our backs.

Just in case of another loss, the team should expect something much more fierce than what happened against Rennes last week. As Albert Emon himself pointed out last week, “The booing was very classy, very polite. We’ve seen much worse. The fans will be much more ferocious if they don’t see 10 players plus the bench play their hardest. But I think the players are aware of that.”
Let’s hope they’re very aware of that situation.

The only other variable will be the pitch itself. Tonight the french National Rugby team just whooped the English XV’s asses righteously in the Vélodrome but there’s no telling how the pitch will be tomorrow. We have a lot of very technical players on the team but this shouldn’t be an excuse. We knew this and people will be working on the field all night long to make it suitable for our boys tomorrow.