One minute on Friday, the armband on Saturday
Sixty seconds. That was the entire shift Neal Maupay got on Friday night against Strasbourg, in OM’s opening league fixture of the season at the Velodrome. A 4-0 win, a token cameo, nothing else.
Twenty-four hours later the French striker was out at Stade Francis-Turcan. In the starting eleven. For Marseille’s reserve side, in a friendly against ES Fos. Wearing the captain’s armband.
He had company. Tadjidine Mmadi was in the squad too, along with Koum and Bezahaf, players hovering around the fringe of the senior set-up.
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The official line holds up fine. Maupay is 30 and he needs minutes. Competition for places in Bruno Genesio’s squad has not eased off, and a one-minute runout a week does nothing for a striker’s timing.
The unofficial reading is just as easy to make. A player with Premier League mileage skippering the reserves on a Saturday afternoon in late August does not look like a career plan. It looks like a waiting room.
The window shuts in a matter of days. Maupay could be gone before it does.
Marseille’s books are the real problem
His timing is dreadful. That same Saturday, Frank McCourt and Stephane Richard told supporter leaders that OM will still have to sell several players, without putting names to it. Genesio had already flagged that another round of departures was coming.
When a club admits it has to shave the wage bill, the men training with the reserves are rarely the ones pencilled in to stay. Maupay can read a room.
One catch remains. Finding a buyer for a 30-year-old striker in the last week of a market where every club is counting euros is not a simple job. If nobody comes forward, Marseille keep a reserve-team captain on senior wages until January.
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