Transfer Thread, Pt. II!

sometimes so funny you forget to laugh!

UNAF (referee's union) president Bernard Saules:
Jean-Claude Dassier should stick to playing cards, there are fewer officiating mistakes. I'm wary about the comportment of these pseudo présidents who arrive on the football scene and allow themselves to call referees dishonest. We referees don't go around calling the presidents dishonest.

and yet they could! dassier is the first OM president in 20 years not to have been indicted (at least so far) for one thing or another.

 

let's not mix up the torchons and the serviettes!

in 23 years aulas has come up with plenty of statements that go beyond the provocative into the foolhardy, but none that carry the mind-numbing stupidity that characterizes dassier's almost every word.

results? it's true that dassier's presidency has brought OM their first title after 17 years of floundering (but who knows? that might be margarita's influence!). when he's put them on the podium 11 straight seasons and the CL knockout rounds as often as any team in europe over the same period we can almost start a comparison. almost because JCD started out with the second biggest budget in L1, JMA started out in the ventre mou of D2.

aulas was a sportsman. an entrepreneur. and above all, a born and bred lyonnais who took over the club the way joan of arc took the dauphin to reims. dassier is a subjournalist who worked his way up the ORTF and radio france kissing ass and stabbing backs. and he's parisian. he doesn't care about your club any more than i do.

 

i'm not sure you can put much blame on dassier. i imagine his role is just chairing meetings between margarita's and josé's people to forge and manage transfer policy. his opinion on players is likely no more important than tonini's.

he's made at least three or four idiotic statements this week* but this one, on the surface at least, is sensible (even if the pressure every bit as high in lyon or paris as at marseille at base the reasoning is valid; there's every possibility that gameiro or sow could flounder in marseille, as did koné, ziani, zubar...) and presidential (he's justifying a staff decision). the hic is that while doing that he also makes clear that rémy and gignac were didier's choice. considering the atmosphere between DD and JA, that's far from gratuitous.

now let's examine the choice in question, or rather choices since gignac/sow and rémy/gameiro can be considered independently.

gignac is a local, born and bred just down the road in martigues. but he's one of those players like xavier gravelaine, who remains wildly overrated for a long time on the basis of one huge season. another misleading stat is the goals he's scored in europe and in the EdF: nominally high pressure situations but a closer look shows that he's good... when the competition is trabzonspor or the faroe islands. he hasn't shone in the face of adversity in his career; when he arrived at téfécé he wilted in front of competition for his spot.

that said, moussa sow's great start to this season is something no one could have predicted. i'm no fan of luis fabiano either. the real puzzler is why they didn't make the effort to keep niang for at least another season instead of making an overhyped signing like gignac.

now for rémy. if OM really had the choice between him and gameiro personally i'd have preferred gameiro: i've been watching loïc ever since he was in the CFA, and am amazed his stock has risen so high. even at nice the numbers he put up never seemed to correlate to any real value to the team, who paradoxically played better without him. but stats put them fairly equal, and so does their production this season.

* "the tie with MU? 50%-50%!" OK dude, whatever! (later he blamed this on his tranquilizers, which may explain a great deal more.)

* "with [luis fabiano], we almost had a catastrophe. i congratulate myself every day not to have signed him". true maybe, but saying it in so many words lacks class.

"winter arrivals? none. except maybe kakuta. no, kakuta doesn't interest us. maybe someone else. but only on loan. but then again maybe not." again, whatever.

* but the cherry on top is using immédiateté yesterday while calming down (stirring up?) the DD/JA debate, just getting in under the wire to win the marie-ségo award for worst neologism of 2010.

 

it's normal for you to say that! after he led the league in scoring at SMC the only team he ever played well for (among about a dozen) was OM, and at the period where times were toughest! that says something good about him right there.

the intelligence i'll grant you, even if his commentary on france télévision makes it hard to defend: better a steady diet of the good-natured gaffes of "cire et cernes" (what my daughter calls fab & xav) than 10 minutes, nay 30 seconds, of the diatribe of well-spoken, self-appointed geniuses like duga, menès... or myself!