Mini-Bielsa to shake up his mentor's ex-club

There is going to be a lot of hard work, tons of videos and tactical changes, Sampaoli (60) promised. He will be officially presented on Tuesday at the end of his compulsory seven-day isolation period. However the new OM coach has already set foot on the lawns of the training center.

A day after a pitiful elimination from the Coupe de France against lower-tier team, Canet-en-Roussillon (1-2), players got the chance to meet their new coach. The session was quite short and above all it allowed OM to publish the first photos of the Argentine in his "new colors".

Sampaoli did not invite any young people to the meeting that followed, with the exception of the goalkeeper, Fabio Vanni. This nearly hour-long interview marked the coach's real encounter with the entire group and he quickly got to the heart of the matter. Terrified by what he had seen the day before - the elimination from the Coupe de France - he voluntarily chose not to talk about it to his new players, already affected in their self-esteem. But he promised them work, a lot of work, in the next few weeks.

He took advantage of his period of isolation to discuss with Moroccan Nasser Larguet, who acted as interim, to watch all of OM's last matches and better familiarize himself with the players, their qualities and their faults. He now has a more precise idea of ​​what he can do with this workforce.

Sampaoli does not believe this group is cut out to evolve in patterns such as 3-4-3 or 4-3-3, at the moment. It is difficult to predict ​​the team he intends to align against Rennes on Wednesday, but he has already announced to his players that he intends to establish a 5-3-2 at least for the next matches.

Sampaoli then hosted a video session where focus was on how to get the ball out cleanly and the role of each player in this phase of play, which is essential for the coach. He insisted on everyone's responsibility, on everyone's movements, from the goalkeeper to the center-forward to be able to achieve this. The older players - Steve Mandanda, Dimitri Payet and Florian Thauvin - must have remembered the endless video sessions, binging in the dark, when a certain Marcelo Bielsa had introduced them to his method, seven years ago.

Sampaoli's mentor, El Loco, five years his senior, was Sampaoli's inspiration in the early 1990s at the Newell's Old Boys training center. As Bielsa, Sampaoli also doesn't want to leave anything to chance and therefore intends to build very precise ball circulation patterns. As sources reports, he was quite shocked to see that the players did not know what to do with the ball in the last matches.

From the players' point of view, the first contact with their coach has been rather encouraging. Sampaoli knows that he will first have to heal the team mentally, to reassure them and build momentum for next season. He will have to quickly bring them back to victory road since they only won twice in the last 15 matches in Ligue 1.

Disappointed Villas-Boas hands in resignation at Marseille

Rennes is arriving at the Vélodrome this Wednesday in a late match of the 22nd round - the meeting postponed due to the safety break-out in January at the club's grounds. Events that preceded the departure of the former coach, André Villas-Boas, and triggered even more pressure on the president, Jacques-Henri Eyraud, for yet another revolution. A new era is now beginning with Jorge Sampaoli on the bench.