Posted December 29, 2021 at 2:15 am by AM
While OM decided to bet on Pau Lopez last summer, Jérôme Rothen is annoyed by the way Steve Mandanda was treated.
Last summer, one of the priorities of the OM was to attract a new porter in order to compete with Steve Mandanda . The initial objective was to recruit a number 1 bis in order to offer a real competitor to the former Le Havre, also capable of replacing him in the medium term. With this in mind, Pau Lopez arrived in the form of a loan with an option to buy. However, the Spaniard took the upper hand over Steve Mandanda and Jérôme Rothen believes that the way OM behaved did not is not fair.
“It was hard to make this change without explanation”
“When Pau Lopez took over from Steve Mandanda, it was at a time when OM were doing well, where Steve Mandanda was doing very well Also. It was hard to make this change without an explanation. For the moment Pau Lopez is playing his matches (…) but in the first matches, the fault of hand in Moscow (against Lokomotiv) certainly costs them the qualification in the Europa League. (…) All this alone shows that there has never been any competition. Jorge Sampaoli and Pablo Longoria have always hid behind “We bring back a high level goalkeeper like Steve Mandanda”. They were afraid of the reaction of Steve Mandanda and the reaction of the public because Steve Mandanda remains an incredible figure in Marseille. If they had taken this radical decision of entry by saying “We take a number one and Steve you will be number two”, we could have understood it, but they lacked frankness and sincerity “, he confides in microphone from RMC.