The team returns this Friday on the 80 days of Jorge Sampaoli at Stade Rennais. The transplant did not take between the Argentinian coach and the Breton club, and if the reasons are multiple, the management of the transfer window poses a number of questions.
Sampaoli had notably asked for defenders. They arrived by wagon at the very end of January, too late to save the former OM coach. On the other hand, the Argentinian technician saw a goalkeeper disembark, Brice Samba, whom he had not asked.
In Marseille, Sampaoli is the coach who pushed Steve Mandanda to the exit. But this time, there is nothing to do with it. It was its leaders who decided to recruit Brice Samba.
“It is indeed a choice of Arnaud Pouille, a strategic decision of the club in the medium term, and not a short -term sporting choice of the staff”,, entrusts a Rennes source to the team.
Samba, it starts badly
Cohabitation was difficult. Samba arrived from Lens with his own goalkeeper coach, Hervé Sekli, and the atmosphere was not the most pleasant with Steve Mandanda and the other door coach, Olivier Sorin. After a difficult match in Nice in early January, Mandanda himself suggested that he did not chain against OM in stride, and Samba was logically promoted.
The beginnings of the French international were not simple. Arrived “with a few pounds too much” according to the team, Samba began his Rennes career with four defeats (including an elimination in Troyes in the Coupe de France) who ended up being fatal in Sampaoli. He recovered well, at the same time as the whole team, during the first of Habib Beye against Strasbourg (1-0).
