Marked for Stéphane Blanc
From our football correspondent
Upbeat
Player ratings4 Oct 2027
A defender's goal wins it for Montpellier HSC — 7.97
1 for Johann Lepenant, marked 7.97, and a centre-half's name in the part of the report he normally only reaches by mistake. He will not be allowed to forget it in the dressing room for a month.
Market4 Oct 2027
“I have ambitions, and I would like the club to share them.” Nobody has asked to leave and nobody has been shown the door — but a player chooses that sentence carefully, and a boardroom hears it exactly as it was meant.
Market4 Oct 2027
Yanis Issoufou has one foot out of the door
Terms are settled between the clubs and the rest is paperwork and a photograph. Around Montpellier HSC they have already started talking about him in the past tense.
Squad4 Oct 2027
“Some decisions take a long time. This one took ten minutes, and most of that was finding a pen.” Téji Savanier and Montpellier HSC agree another 2 years.
Squad4 Oct 2027
It was not about football and everybody who saw it knows that. Two men who have to play together on Saturday said things at Montpellier HSC this week that will take longer than a week to unsay.
Squad4 Oct 2027
Alexandre Mendy falls out with a teammate over standards
The oldest argument in any dressing room and the only one that is genuinely about football: one man thinks another is not putting enough in. It is also the row a manager privately does not mind having happened.
The terraces4 Oct 2027
At 23 he is being sung about by people twice his age, which is an affection a signing has to earn over years and a local kid gets for turning up. It is also the hardest thing in football to live up to.
Match2 Oct 2027
A 1‑0 win over ESTAC Troyes, earned rather than given, and the sort of afternoon that sends everyone home talking about next week instead of this one.
Squad4 Oct 2027
The medical room confirms 42 days on the sidelines for Stéphane Blanc, and a plan built around him now has to be rebuilt.
Back issues
From our football correspondent
Uneasy
Transfer targets12 Jul 2027
Montpellier HSC and Olympique de Marseille have settled on $540.0K. The rest belongs to the player and his agent, and a supporter who has watched one of these before knows not to buy the shirt yet.
Market12 Jul 2027
“I have given everything here and I need a new challenge.” The request is formal, and the relationship will never be quite the same again.
Market12 Jul 2027
The clubs have agreed terms, and what remains is formality: a medical, a photograph, a signature. Nobody at Montpellier HSC is pretending he will be back in the shirt.
Transfer targets12 Jul 2027
An offer of $320.0K for Saliou Diop
Montpellier HSC have gone to Stade Brestois with a bid, and the supporters have gone to the internet with an opinion about it. Whether either changes anything is up to the selling club.
Squad12 Jul 2027
Modibo Sagnan was at the centre of it, and by the time it was pulled apart there were three or four others involved. Training grounds are small places and long seasons make them smaller.
Transfer targets12 Jul 2027
Not now, not at any price the club was prepared to say out loud. Toulouse FC have kept their man, and Montpellier HSC go back to a list with one name crossed off it.
Squad12 Jul 2027
29 days, the medical staff say, and medical staff are optimists by profession. The team sheet will look wrong without him.
Market12 Jul 2027
FC Fleury 91 are about to pick up the phone
A conversation is coming this week. Montpellier HSC will put a number on him, and from there it stops being football and becomes arithmetic.
From our football correspondent
Uneasy
Squad12 Apr 2027
Some afternoons a goalkeeper is the team. 9 saves, several of them the sort nobody expects to see stopped, and a scoreline that flatters everybody in front of him.
Squad12 Apr 2027
Raúl De Tomás was at the centre of it, and by the time it was pulled apart there were three or four others involved. Training grounds are small places and long seasons make them smaller.
Squad12 Apr 2027
Somebody said out loud what several people thought about how hard another man trains, and Julien Laporte was in the middle of it. The one dressing-room argument that is genuinely about football.
Market12 Apr 2027
There is no fee, no unveiling and no agent on the steps. Stéphane Blanc has been at this club since he was a boy and is now, formally, one of the first-team squad — which for a local readership beats any signing of any size.
Market12 Apr 2027
The academy exists for exactly this morning. Jean-Baptiste Jacquet has come through every age group the club runs and has now been handed a senior number, and the people who coached him at twelve will be the proudest in the building.
Market12 Apr 2027
Clubs spend fortunes looking for players and occasionally find one down the corridor. Raymond Henry is that, and the reception he gets on his first appearance will be different in kind from the one any signing receives.
Market12 Apr 2027
The academy exists for exactly this morning. Dominique Lefèvre has come through every age group the club runs and has now been handed a senior number, and the people who coached him at twelve will be the proudest in the building.
The dugout12 Apr 2027
The team sheet said everything about Hobie Verhulst
Warm-up bib, ninety minutes of watching, and a handshake at the end that fooled nobody. Big matches tell you who a manager trusts; this one told Hobie Verhulst.
The dugout12 Apr 2027
It is not much of a headline and it is the reason players believe the next promise. Montpellier HSC told Raúl De Tomás something would happen and then it happened, which in this industry passes for remarkable.