We thought he was at the end, destined to gradually disappear from the landscape, but here he is again in the light. Despite his 37 years, Steve Mandanda has managed to find a place in the cage of Olympique de Marseille, after spending nearly six months watching the matches from the sidelines. And there is no reason to think that he will not be the one who will keep it against Feyenoord Rotterdam, in the first leg of the Europa League conference, Thursday April 28.
The European Cup is his territory. Since the last Europa League group stage match, against Lokomotiv Moscow (1-0) in December, he has always been established in the Marseille goal. He used the consolation prize offered by his coach Jorge Sampaoli to make it a ground of affirmation.
While he seemed to be taking the clear path to the end of his career, seeing his playing time drastically decrease in club and disappearing from the hierarchy of goalkeepers in the France team (he has not played in Blue since November 2020 , and has not been called up in the last three rallies), Steve Mandanda contradicted the idea of an irretrievable decline. Thursday, he could celebrate his 100th appearance in European competition, almost fifteen years after his debut in C1 against Besiktas in September 2007.
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Everything changed on February 17, when Jorge Sampaoli pulled him out of the closet in the first leg against Qarabag (3-1). This meeting could have had an embarrassing outcome for OM without the four decisive saves of their goalkeeper, who until then had only been entitled to a very small outing in 2022, against US Chauvigny in the round of 16. of the French Cup (3-0).
For a long time, Mandanda had to be chomping at the bit. The arrival of Pau Lopez, ten years his junior, propelled him to the bench in September, arousing the incomprehension of a large part of OM supporters. “On wants there to be a rotation between these two goalkeepers because all the players need to have playing time“, had first invoked Sampaoli after the first tenure of the Spaniard in Monaco. Except that the performances of the latter established a clear hierarchy until this month of April. Very comfortable in participating in the construction of his team’s game, even if it means touching the ball thirty meters from his goals, Pau Lopez quickly responded to the requirements of the Sampaoli system.
But he made a mistake when Mandanda started knocking on the door. Facing Saint-Etienne on April 3, he was completely holed up on a crushed strike from Denis Bouanga that he had to capture. A week later, the goal was kept by Steve Mandanda against Montpellier, he who had been waiting for five months to step onto the lawn of a Ligue 1 match again.
78 – Top 3 balls played by a goalkeeper in a Ligue 1 match since Opta analyzed the competition (2006/07):
78 – Steve Mandanda in Reims tonight
73 – Pau Lopez v Monaco on March 6, 2022
73 – Pau Lopez in Strasbourg on December 12, 2021Sampaoli. #SDROM pic.twitter.com/a1oGN5DBsx
— OptaJean (@OptaJean) April 24, 2022
The experience was repeated against Reims last Sunday, with a new clean sheet (1-0). “I take the matches as they are, I give the best of myself, and I enjoy moments like that. I train every day to perform when called upon. It’s not easy, but I play football in a big club, I’m happy to be here. We chain the victories, and we will see at the end of the season“, tempered the interested party at the microphone of Prime Video.
Despite his short playing time (15 games out of his team’s 50), Mandanda did not make waves and waited his turn, even if it meant ironizing about his situation when Samir Nasri and Canal + came to the Commanderie for a subject on Jorge Sampaoli at the beginning of April. “He doesn’t make me play, but it’s fine, calm down“, he laughed in front of his coach and his former teammate. The tide has since turned in his favor, when he realizes that with him, OM have still not lost a single match this season.