Olivier Ntcham’s loan move from Celtic to Marseille was one of the most intriguing moves of the winter market, largely because Andre Villas-Boas made it very clear he hadn’t wanted the player.
The manager was insistent he hadn’t given his approval to negotiating the move with Celtic, and had instead been keen on other profiles. This was all part of a Marseille tussle with sporting director Pablo Longoria, and saw Villas-Boas quickly leave his position.
Given the coach had already made it pretty clear he’d be leaving at the end of the season it wasn’t a huge surprise to see him go early.
Ntcham has been at the centre of a storm since his arrival, and during his press conference on Tuesday he questioned Villas-Boas’ stance, saying the manager had previously made efforts to get him, and that the Portuguese’s own agent had tried to get involved.
That was when Andoni Zubizarreta was sporting director at the French club, and he left in May 2020. There’s every possibility the manager did want Ntcham when he was doing better for Celtic, but given he’d been out of Neil Lennon’s selection for some weeks, it’s quite understandable if Villas-Boas didn’t then feel the player was what he immediately needed.
L’Equipe quote the Celtic owned player as saying: “His personal agent (Villas-Boas) wanted to work with me, he asked for an exclusive mandate in Marseille, which I did not accept. OM is a big club and for nothing in the world would I have refused to come here, it was not done due to agent fuss.”
The French newspaper go on to say that Longoria knows Ntcham’s current agent, so it seems very much like the Marseille battle between manager and sporting director was also playing out behind the scenes, with the fuss over the signing from Celtic bringing it all to the boil.
Ntcham hasn’t impressed Marseille fans by being a PSG supporter, but he dismissed that controversy yesterday by saying: “I am from Paris, so obviously I supported the club in my city.”
There’s a lot of pressure now on the 25-year-old and if he doesn’t perform quickly then it’s likely the club’s support will get on his back, and even Longoria’s agent connections may not be able to stop that leading to a quick return to Celtic.
