The Marseille-Strasbourg axis…

By: Magnusson | August 2nd, 2007

Mamdou Niang Assistant coach Dominique Cuperly, Mamadou Niang, Habib Bèye, Salim Arrache, Leyti Ndiaye, Mehdi Sennaoui, Manuel Dos Santos and Pascal Johansen. We might want to add recent departees like Mickaël Pagis and Péguy Luyindula to that list. Let’s not forget Frank Leboeuf, Pascal Nouma, Didier Six and former legends Franck Sauzée and Jean-Pierre Papin. Those are some of the players that worn both teams jerseys at some point in their careers (These are just from the top of my head, I’m pretty sure there are lots more).

Jean-Pierre Papin is even the main reason for Strasbourg’s spectacular season last year in Ligue 2 despite it being his first-ever professional coaching job. Things didn’t go very well for JPP and Strasboug this summer though, and he was unceremoniously fired for basically having flirted too openly with other teams and trying to get his president’s attention like any high school chick out of her retainer would have done. Where am I going with this? I have no idea…

The point I was trying to make is that these two teams share more than the team uniforms sky blue colours and the presence of megalomaniacal presidents in the early 90s. They seem to share thye same tastes in players and specifically in strikers. I mean Leboeuf and Beye captained both teams!!!

It will be pretty interesting to see how Jean-Marc Furlan does with the very talented yet raw team he has inherited of this season. He’s been doing the classic “humble route” lately, insisting that it would be a great thing if Strasbourg was able to maintain itself in the Ligue 1. Now let’s be real, Strasbourg is one of those natural Ligue 1 teams that just tripped and we all hope they’ll stay. It’s always good for the Ligue to have Derbys and Nancy-Strasbourg will definitly be one to watch. While it is highly mentionable on Furlan’s end to underline the beauty of being seventeenth, he’s only fooling himself. He has one of the more passionate if scarce public East of Paris (that’s not saying myuch but still…) and has a tradition of european contender to uphold. They’ll let him work, but not too long. Best of luck to him and his team and we all hope they’ll be able to digest their first defeat on Saturday and move on after that.

I’ll talk more about our side tomorrow. Let’s try to do this right.
It’s 2am, let’s go to bed….