Marseille set themselves up for a fall in the summer, with the enthusiastic help of France’s sport media.
Newly monied, Marseille were set to sign a big name striker to help their project. Except it didn’t happened in July, and then in August there were all kinds of links without anything happening.
On August 31st, Marseille agreed a deal worth around €15m for Kostas Mitroglou. Doing much better than his nightmare time at Fulham, Mitrogol was living up to that nickname at Benfica.
But he wasn’t a big name in anything other than characters (Konstantinos Mitroglou is pretty big to be fair) and therefore always had a downer surrounding him. Two goals so far this season haven’t helped his case.
It could have been different, and one of the names brought up by L’Equipe, who on Thursday once again look at Marseille’s striker failure, is Islam Slimani. The Leicester City striker hadn’t been one of the dream names but was another one who Marseille didn’t get around to securing.
And perhaps they could have, had they worked early enough, and realistically enough with regards to price. Slimani is again struggling to get Leicester minutes, but continues to keep his goalscoring touch.
He’ll surely be a target for clubs in the winter window, and again in the summer if Leicester are stubborn in January.
But now they’ve spent on Mitroglou, and Slimani’s circle of appreciation seems to be widening, Marseille would have an even harder time getting a deal done.
Failing to sign the Leicester City striker is just one black mark in a strangely long list of Marseille striker failures. Maybe next summer is the time for less talking, less leaking, and more doing.
