Olivier Giroud to Marseille: It’s a story that refuses to go away, and with the France international struggling both for minutes and goals, it was bound to rear its head once again.
Scoring his first goal of the season against BATE Borisov last Thursday, the Chelsea striker has remained as patient as any striker can when he isn’t getting minutes, but at 32 and with a career slowly come to its end, things aren’t exactly ideal at Stamford Bridge.
Down their end, Marseille are struggling to get their resident forwards to find the back of the net, with neither Valère Germain nor Kostas Mitroglou showing any consistency, which is where Olivier Giroud would come in.
It’s a story that’s spanned over two years, even back when he was at Arsenal, but a reluctance to return to Ligue 1, where he made a name for himself with Montpellier, always stopped anything from happening.
Le Foot in France, however, believe that reticence has now waned, as Olivier Giroud, aware he might need to widen his horizons beyond the Premier League to get the time on the pitch he wants, is more open to a move back to the south of France.
In fact, the magazine claim that both parties (the player and Marseille) have ‘considerably grown closer’ over a potential agreement which could go one of two ways.
One would be a loan from Chelsea from January until the end of the season with a two-year contract to follow or the veteran forward just runs down his contract (which is due to expire in June), with the Blues allowing him to leave on a free, holding back on triggering the extra year clause in his deal.
The only way the latter of the two would happen would be if Marseille qualified for the Champions League, meaning finishing 3rd or better.
As things stand, they are currently 6th, three points off third-placed Montpellier.
It would make sense, but we have our doubts over the source, which hasn’t always been the best, so we recommend taking this with a pinch of salt for now.
