Sablé turns around and signs with Lens, Valdo could be an OM player right now, Mendy headed to Parma?

By: Sam | June 22nd, 2007

First off, the big one. After making it crystal-clear that he loved Marseille, that he was coming to Marseille, that all parties had found an agreement, Julien Sablé has officially unveiled his other face and signed with Racing Club de Lens. Monetary terms and contract length have not yet been disclosed. Am I the only one who’s blindsided by this? Of course, after Cheyrou came, it was really difficult to see how Sablé could have worked himself in, because no coach in the world would want to change anything to a Cheyrou-Cana partnership. Nonetheless, that’s one hell of a splash. He joins Kanga Akalé and Vedran Runje as Lens’ additions for the upcoming Intertoto Cup.

As Barcelona state that they don’t want anything to do with Ludovic Giuly and vice-versa, which would only make his transfer to Marseille more certain, another spoke in the wheel has just turned up. That spoke goes by the name of Valmiro Lopez Rocha, aka Valdo of CS Osasuna. La Provence wrote today that he had spoken with the staff and agreed to something or other. However, someone has written on Wikipedia that he’s gone and signed a contract with Espanyol. We’ll wait a bit and probably have some closure on this within the end of the day.

The always handy L’Équipe wrote today that PSG defender Bernard Mendy, criticized abundatly this year by supporters in the capital, could be heading to the Serie A, more precisely Parma, to shake off a bad year and start afresh in a new league. Affaire à suivre…

In unrelated news, both Marseille and Lyon narrowly missed out on favourable seeding for next year’s Champions League. Lyon, in Pot 2 for now, are just behind Valencia and Manchester United, but could weasel their way into the first hat if somehow, two clubs out of Arsenal, Liverpool and Valencia lose in the qualifying stages.

Marseille, on the other hand, are in a better position to move up to the third pot. For them not to, it would require wins Liverpool, Arsenal, Valencia, Sevilla, Benfica, Ajax, Werder Bremen, Celtic, Steaua Bucuresti and Lazio. Anyone want to bet?

Anyways, that’s all for today, be safe and eat your green vegetables.