Football

Eric Bailly, the winter rookie

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Eric Bailly is a truly exceptional player. Especially when his body leaves him alone. When we tried to guess if Olympique de Marseille was looking for a central defender to strengthen this winter, the answer was always the same: “no, it’s Eric Bailly”. A sentence that made us smile a little, we admit it.

Because, since the start of the season, the Ivorian central defender had only played ten small games, including seven starts, because of his injuries. He must also play at least 50% of the matches for the option to buy OM has from Manchester United to be exercised. So of course, we waited to see.

To read
Montpellier – Marseille: the notes of the match

Tudor looks relieved

By the very admission of his coach, he must be put in bubble wrap, not to rush his return. And that’s what he did against Toulouse (6-1) by bringing him in thirty minutes from the end and the same on Monday, in Montpellier (2-1), where he started the game before giving up his place to Leonardo Balerdi for the last half hour. But during this first part of the match, he was really excellent and you have to be blind not to see that there is a Marseille defense with and without him.

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He won most of his duels, even if the pure and hard statistics indicate a total of 1 duel won out of 7 disputed. Because in reality, he avoids most of his duels by anticipating and having a reading of the game well above average. This may explain it, but Pau Lopez was very quiet yesterday afternoon.

His coach, Igor Tudor, in a press conference, appeared, about him, half-ambitious, half-relieved: “ I have already said that he has been given a special regimen of physical preparation. I liked what I saw, I even saw a big level. It has a high quality level. It’s a good start. Let’s hope he gets that continuity he needs. We will work for “. Let’s bet for OM and for him that it continues like this.

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Eric Bailly, the winter rookie 24hfootnews.

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