Quick News Roundup (There’s Nothing Going On)

By: Martha | September 4th, 2008

“Forget that medal, we give you flowers!”

If your club’s not buying or selling a superstar or sending players to Big Name European National Teams, international breaks are almost entirely bereft of items of interest. The Nice players not on international duty are busy training (there’s a very boring video proving this at the official site), and the rest are off with their national teams, training in such seclusion that no photo or news agencies can find them. (Well, either that or they don’t want to find them. But that’s can’t be it, right?)

The news, such as it is:

•Despite the absence of so many first-team players, Matt Moussilou, Patrick Baru and Joseph-Desire Job all remain in the reserve team, while babies from the youth team join the big kids for training. Supposedly Moussilou and Baru could be heading to Qatar sooner than later, Moussilou returning to the site of his goal-scoring explosion last year, while Baru will embark on a brand new adventure there (where someone other than Nice will be paying him).

•Traoré will be out two weeks with the thigh injury he picked up against Valenciennes, so thank goodness Ben Saada is back. Cyril #1, supposedly, will be back in full training this weekend. So they say, anyway — I realize we’ve heard this before.

•Lilian Laslandes, who was supposed to be patient this summer and wait for Nice to resign him, is still without a contract, and is regretting not signing the extension he was offered last winter. He’s apparently considering retiring, which is sad, but the man is ancient in footballing terms and, even with the pay cut to which he agreed last winter, still earns a pretty substantial salary. Nice may regret letting him go if there are awful striker injury problems later in the season (Excuse me for a second while I knock on wood and throw salt everywhere.), but at the moment it just seems like a good business decision not to keep him around.

•Even with the lofty place in the table (Fourth! FOURTH!), Antonetti’s keeping his wits about him, and is already thinking about next summer — he’s well aware of what happens to clubs who sell the top players every summer, and doesn’t want Nice to follow their examples and end up floundering in L2. Is there anything better than a coach who always sees the worst possible future? I don’t think so. (That’s sincere, by the way. I absolutely love his fierce refusal to get excited about anything.)

•Hellebuyck and Chouf have weighed in on the team’s progress this week, the former discussing new tactics (pushing further up the pitch and trying to attack more) and the latter (on 100% Aiglons, which is available on the official website in annoying flash video form) lauding the team’s “fabulous state of mind.”

Only nine days until Lyon.