Claude Puel does not hide his annoyance and his fears for the 2020-2021 Ligue 1 season, after the announcement of the postponement of the Marseille – Saint-Etienne match scheduled for Friday at the opening of the championship. The OM, which has detected new cases of coronavirus in its workforce, must comply with the decision of the LFP: above three cases in a club, a meeting can be postponed. But it is not to the taste of Claude Puel: “These are the health recommendations that were asked. Afterwards, there is a real reflection on whether they are the right ones. Because I don’t see the championship going normally under these conditions. There will be no dates to systematically postpone the postponed matches. Right now _we meet in the wall_. “
“I am very pessimistic about the holding of the championship” the Stéphanois coach testifies on franceinfo, “There are leagues that only detect the symptomatic and do not test the rest. There, we could very well have thought that all the negative players of Marseille could be available and quarantine those who tested positive. is a draconian protocol, if it’s a matter of caution, stop everything. Every day, automatically there will be cases. We can make all the recommendations and health measures we want, the virus is circulating in all populations. The solution is not there.“
Everyone was weighed down …
Claude Puel then asks himself: “How to manage a team, physically, mentally, how to make a championship quite simply fair? I did not warn my players or my staff before the training session, we had an extraordinary session and then I told them at the end of the session that unfortunately we will not play this match. Everyone was weighed down. We prepare for the competition and not to play one game per month. There, we had a match on July 24, we had to have a match for the start of the championship, we didn’t have it, we will play against Lorient, we hope, behind there will be a fortnight still without a match because that there will be the international truce … _This is not competition, there!_“
Claude Puel considers that faced with the pandemic, the actors of French football are for the moment in “reaction” more than “anticipation”. “Are we going to chain matches, postpone others, eliminate others? There was no anticipation, we have no settlement. There will be a League meeting after the first two games. , in September to assess what happened. But we’re already there. “