Marseille loses to a fifteen-man Rennes squad…

First of all, I would like to apologize for the lack of updates lately but between getting the Senegal World Cup Blog fired up, preparing for a trip that I’ll keep you informed on in due time and school, I haven’t had much time to write about Marseille as much as I would have liked and as much as it should have been and I apologize for it.

It’s has been a big week for us and a week not so good but let’s start with the beginning. So last sunday we went and played against Rennes in the first one of our league games in 2008 and had to confirm the good form we’ve been showing more or less constantly in the last two months and a few players (I’m looking at Djibril Cissé on this one) had to prove their worth and with Mamadou Niang gone to the Afcon a week ago to defend Senegal, the Niang-dependence theory had to be proven wrong.
About the game itself, it is easily one of the more exciting games of 2008 yet. But since the game was four days ago and I had time to watch it a second time and all my thoughts were confirmed by everone concerned, it’s just a shame. Shazback has a pretty great recap of the game if you ask me so I won’t even bother you with my opinions and evaluations of players because he happens to be pretty spot-on about everything that happened. Aside of from the fact that he doesn’t really view the official as I did but that’s only fair.

Let me give you the backstory. When the referee of the Rennes game was apointed, the whole Rennes staff, Pierre Dréossi mainly started saying how they thought it was unfair to them to pick a referee from Marseille and that they wouldn’t want to be cheated against and that they felt the league was trying to get the bigger team on top by using low methods and ouin, ouin, ouin (how do you spell whining again?)

Seriously, I saw this coming as big as a house. Mr Bruno Coué had to go through a media shitstorm all week and had to say the same thing to every single media in the country “I WILL NOT FAVOR MARSEILLE”. Now come Sunday night and the fateful game and of course it had to happen.
After a great match start where both team played a very pleasant game but marseille most of all showed excellent spirit, Kanga Akalé tried to rekindle the flame he and Djibril had for a season in Auxerre and gave him an assist after 16 minutes and Djibril scored his second goal in as many outings, proving that he may be on his way back. And then the drama happens. Mr Coué, who seemed particularly nervous beforehand started playing for the home team with the Rennes public cheering on. At the 39th minute, after a few Rennais encounters and a domination on their part, Mickael Pagis who couldn’t have been more offside if he was a fellow blogger on here scored what was a magnificent example of pure class, experience and just all around dopeness as a player.
Both teams went to the locker-rooms after that and not much elese occured in the first-half.

Second Half: Both teams came back and Marseille is dominating. One of the best players on the pitch at that moment, Juan angel Krupoviesa who was having a great debut with us got litterally murdered by Micka Pagis who walked all over his ankle and at some point I believed something could be broken. Pagis does this like twice every season, he just fucks up and hurts someone and was well on his way to receive another one of his red cards and as much as I like the guy, he deserved to go out. But Mr Coué decided to only book him, which is, I believe why Dréossi deserves his weekly as much as anyone because any other referee would have given him a red card, no question about it.
So Pagis walked and after a few minutes, JAK came back on the pitch and after losing the ball to Pagis this time he tried to tackle it back and while sliding, took his right leg with him. Thinking that it was some kind of revenge from the guy all media were out to get last week saying how much he was like Eric Di-Méco and how hard he was on the man, Mr Coué, after toying with the idea of a yellow card and the card itself, took a minute to pull the red card. JAK tried to make him understand how he could that it was his first foul and that he himself wanted to only book him before pulling the “tarjeta roja” on him.
Marseille would have to play with an incredibly diminished defense and the only player who was giving satisfaction so far gets ejected. It was hard, too hard for us as at the last minuète when Sylvain Wiltord, who was apparently offside, then was not, then was again, then was covered and then was not offside anymore scored at the 82nd minute and went all the way to the corner post to kick a little Tektonik on our asses.
The only Rennes goal that I can’t say anything about is the third and Wiltord’s personal second. He went and danced a little more for us all to see. By that time, I was done with the game altogether and with Mr Coué for what was a disgusting throwback to the days of referee pressure and bribery.

Here are a few highlights of the game

I don’t enjoy criticizing refs for the hell of it because it’s a sterile debate and it doesn’t matter once the game is over with but everyone in France seemed to be shocked that no french referees would be going to the Euro next summer. Well if all of our refs are like Bruno Coué, you can understand why UEFA don’t want them anywhere near Austria not Switzerland this summer.
What warms my heart a little is that after all the polemics and debate, Bruno Coué watched the game again, manned up and apologized to Marseille for the two first Rennes goals and for Pagis not getting ejected. He also admitted that Krupoviesa didn’t deserve the red. He did so on Luis Fernandez’s show “Luis Attaque” on the radio station RMC.
But still homie, three points lost because you were shook!
I’m not saying that Rennes didn’t or couldn’t have won, all I’m saying is their first two goals were offsides and we played with ten players against them and the officials. Let’s hope it doesn’t happen to us anymore. The aftertaste of being cheated is not very pleasant.

Here are some pictures of the game:

Category: French Ligue 1

Tags: Ayew, Bonnart, Cana, Cheyrou, Cissé, dreossi, Faty, French Ligue 1, Givet, Gragnic, Mandanda, mate, MBami, Nasri, Niang, Oruma, pagis, Rennes, Rodriguez, sorlin, Taiwo, Valbuena, wiltord, Zenden., Ziani, Zubar

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