The coach of the Girondins de Bordeaux justified his strong choice to start Hatem Ben Arfa against OM on Saturday night.
Arrived free in Bordeaux only ten days ago, Hatem Ben Arfa made his debut with the Girondins, Saturday evening as part of the 7th day of Ligue 1, at the Velodrome againstOlympic Marseille (defeat 3-1). To the almost general surprise, the coach of the scapular training, Jean-Louis Gasset, decided to establish the former Parisian in a position of number 10, just behind axial striker Nicolas de Préville in a 4-2-3-1.
He made the nets tremble
Obviously, the performance of the French international was eagerly awaited after a missed visit to Valladolid (only 5 appearances) and a season truncated by the coronavirus. If he remained generally discreet, like the entire Bordeaux team, the 33-year-old striker was concerned and applied on the little ball he had to negotiate. He even shook the net in the first half, but he was ultimately signaled in an offside position. After 66 minutes spent on the green rectangle, HBA, not yet 100% physically, gave way to Maja.
“It was better to make him play right away”
“I had decided to play it for an hour, indicated the Aquitaine coach. It was better to get him to play right away before the next matches. He was in a team that was technically dominated so he didn’t receive a lot of good balls apart from the action where his goal was denied. We saw the difference between a team that plays the Champions League and another, like ours, which will have to fight. People who think they are technical see what it takes to really be technical. This evening (yesterday), we saw that we still had a lot of work to do. “
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