A solid starter under Igor Tudor, Valentin Rongier (28 years old, 27 games and 1 goal in L1 this season) had to wait before convincing his previous coach Jorge Sampaoli. The midfielder of Olympique de Marseille had even requested an interview with the Argentinian in the summer of 2021.
“I was coming back from a heel injury, so I was like, ‘maybe he’s not playing you for that.’ So I let time pass, we go on vacation and I come back during the preparation, it’s the same, told the Marseillais to the Carr media And the worst thing is when we were doing exercises, he was talking about midfielders and he wasn’t quoting me. T made me tilt, I told myself that I couldn’t leave it as it is. I said to myself: ‘you wear your cojones, you’ll see it.'”
“So I asked for a meeting with the coach, I told him that I accepted the fact of not being number 1, but that I felt able and legitimate to be in the hierarchy and the rotation, continued the former Nantes player (…) He said to me: ‘you run too much, I don’t need players running around, it’s messed up my game.’ He wanted guys to stay in their zone, his possession game was based on that.”
After a lot of individual work during the preparation that same summer, Rongier had ended up winning the favors of Sampaoli.
