Ismaël Koné left Watford in June for what looked like a potential title battle with Marseille.
Watford were set for another season trying to escape the Championship, and for Koné the opportunity to join Marseille’s ambitious project was one he couldn’t refuse.
The French club made some big name signings, with Roberto De Zerbi clearly wanting to battle PSG for the league trophy. Things aren’t terrible, they’re still in second – six points behind PSG having played a game more, but there’s an element of the wheels coming off.
Following a humiliating 3-0 home defeat to PSG at the end of October, Marseille then got things back on track with a win away to Nantes. Then, that all went up in smoke as they lost 3-1 at home to Auxerre last night.
After the match, Roberto De Zerbi said if the club think he’s the problem then he’ll walk away without compensation. Those comments, turning a difficult situation into an absolute drama, plunged his players into the middle of a media circus.
Le Phoceen quote him as saying: “If you put on the jersey and go on the field, you don’t want to do badly. That’s why I say that we have to work, but not only on the field, also on ourselves. This work has to be general, mental too. That’s what I mean. I train with these guys every day, and I know that they want to do well.”
Asked if playing at home has become a problem, he said: “No, on the contrary, I think it’s a huge source of pride. As I said, we all want to represent this jersey. Afterwards, we have to understand what, at home, is causing us problems. I think it’s not the coach, nor the idea of the game, nor the stadium itself. It can come from us, individually and collectively. We can question ourselves and do more, especially at home. But the stadium, on the contrary, should give us strength.”
Roberto De Zerbi has managed to make an emotionally volatile club even more unstable, and that’s now being passed to the players.
