Speaking to L’Équipe, Marseille’s 23-year-old Senegalese midfielder Pape Gueye discussed what it’s like working under OM coach Jorge Samapoli:
“The coach, he’s special! (laughs) He likes to tease me. Sometimes he stands next to me and punches me. Maybe it’s because I’m much taller than him. (smiles) With him, you know when you can laugh and when you have to give it your all in training… At the beginning, it wasn’t easy because he changed everything I’d known before. With André Villas-Boas or Paul Le Guen at Le Havre, whether I played as six or an eight, I liked to run, to impose myself, to ask for the ball, to move toward the wings. Here, the coach asks me to stay in the centre, to play simple with two or three touches. He repeats it to us all the time: ‘If you move too much, you’re working against us!’”