William Saliba agreed to leave Arsenal to join Marseille on a season-long loan deal this summer, and it was the French club’s president whose encouraging comments helped to convince him.
Many had hoped that the defender would stay in north London this season to challenge for a first-team role at the club, but following the signing of Ben White from Brighton, the former St Etienne youngster agreed to take another loan spell in order to continue his progress.
We will never know if he could have fought his way into contention under Mikel Arteta this season, but there is little fault to take from his spell in Marseille where he has quickly established himself as a regular starter.
Saliba has now opened up on what Les Bleus president Pablo Longoria told him to convince him that he should join.
“Longoria told me that if I wanted to reach the next level in my progression, I had to come here. If you can perform at Marseille, to play under this pressure, you can play anywhere else,” Saliba told Telefoot, as quoted in Get French Football News.
“I hadn’t even signed yet and I was already getting messages from supporters. I’ve never seen passion like this, in this town the only thing that matters in OM.
“With [Jorge] Sampaoli, we have to give it our all from start to finish. We can’t do things half-heartedly. Sometimes I don’t put enough power on my passes and he tells me: ‘those are kids’ passes!’”
Could this loan spell be the perfect scenario to prepare Saliba for next season?
Patrick
OT.. Marseille v Lorient – fantastic performance from Guendouzi against his former team; a brace – first was a tremendous header – and an assist in a 4-1 win 👍
He came back to haunt his old club!😂 seriously great header but his 2nd goal was(unfairly) given as an OG.if you go on YouTube it Twitter OM supporters are making fun of Arsenal,they want to know if we can include Saliba for another 5M on top of the 10M!😂
Matteo guendo just got a brace and an assist now.he’s not good and he has attiude problems.we don’t want passionate,warrior-like players in our team.we have Xhaka,AMN and our very gentle Elneny
I’m more excited to be joining my brother and youngest son at the Emirates tomorrow
It’s been a long time but after a year+ of health concerns due to Covid I am actually going .. yee ha!
Enjoy yourselves!
What most of you need to understand is, some players are more suited to a team. Guendouzi went to Hertha Berlin, at one point he was taking out of the team. So people need to chill. He came to England he had attitude problem. He went to Germany, he fought with his new team mate(lukebakio) and his coach called him out. It’s a matter of time in France. You can have all the talent in this world but your attitude with everything around you will determine how far you would go. An ex player of Marseille has already called him out. I’m not disputing his talent, boy got some talent. So we all need to calm down. Saliba is one I’m more excited about because for some reason he has a cool head, he wants to learn. And I believe once he has Arteta’s backing I’m sure we gonna have our own vvd.
OT: why are we playing Monday and Friday. SMH. Who ever did that fixture needs a smack. Villa played on Saturday and we play on Monday and we will play them on Friday.