Position 10, 22 points, and every result so far reduced to one line. The second half of the season starts with the same squad and a different set of expectations.
“There are things I liked and things we will be doing on Tuesday until they are right.” 1‑1, and a manager who had already decided what Tuesday looked like.
Successful dribbles: 13. He went past people as if he had been told there was a prize for it, and by the end the full-back had stopped pretending to try.
“I pick players who do the work. All of it.” No name was spoken; every camera still turned to Christopher Jullien, and the manager let it.
Squad14 Dec 2026
Nabil Homssa 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.
Nobody will confirm it and the team sheets confirm it every week. One error has bought him a spell as second choice that is already longer than the error deserved.
Nobody at Montpellier HSC will say this on the record and the team sheets have been saying it for weeks. There is a small group in every squad who get picked when the fixture is difficult, and he has joined it.
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.
Successful dribbles: 16. He went past people as if he had been told there was a prize for it, and by the end the full-back had stopped pretending to try.
Somebody said out loud what several people thought about how hard another man trains, and Ouattara Moudjatovic was in the middle of it. The one dressing-room argument that is genuinely about football.
The dugout23 Nov 2026
The manager’s verdict
“That is on me. I pick the team and I picked wrong.” Managers say that when they mean it and when they need to be seen to, and after 0‑1 Roger Robert left the room before anybody could ask which.
It is never announced and it is entirely visible: the biggest afternoons of the season keep containing him. A press box works this out long before anybody at the club confirms a word of it.
In brief
Player ratingsThe pass was always on for Landry Nomel
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.
Squad19 Oct 2026
8 new faces, and Montpellier HSC are still learning each other
A squad rebuilt inside one window pays for it in a currency nobody budgets for. The football is not worse than the sum of the players; it is worse than the sum of the players who have played together before.
The dugout19 Oct 2026
The manager’s verdict
“That is on me. I pick the team and I picked wrong.” Managers say that when they mean it and when they need to be seen to, and after 0‑1 Roger Robert left the room before anybody could ask which.
Clubs make promises constantly and the page usually only hears about them when they are broken. This one was honoured, and the dressing room noticed that faster than any supporter did.
Nobody at Montpellier HSC will say this on the record and the team sheets have been saying it for weeks. There is a small group in every squad who get picked when the fixture is difficult, and he has joined it.
Nobody at Montpellier HSC is suggesting he is out of form. The manager simply wanted somebody with a different set of qualities for ninety specific minutes, and there is nothing a player can train to fix that.
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.
Somebody said out loud what several people had been thinking. Stanis Idumbo is at the centre of it, and the squad will now find out whether the standard rises or the pair of them simply stop speaking.
Setigui Karamoko 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.
Successful dribbles: 11. He went past people as if he had been told there was a prize for it, and by the end the full-back had stopped pretending to try.
There is a version of every career where the player ends up somewhere he chose rather than somewhere that chose him. Ouattara Moudjatovic is living that version at Montpellier HSC, and it tends to show in the first month.
2 boys move up, and somewhere in the building the people who coached them at twelve are quietly having the best morning of their working year. Nothing about this shows up in a result and it is why the academy exists.
Montpellier HSC asked and Paris FC said no without discussing a figure. It is the least ambiguous answer in football and the one clubs most often come back to test.
Clubs spend fortunes looking for players and occasionally find one down the corridor. Michel Deschamps is that, and the reception he gets on his first appearance will be different in kind from the one any signing receives.
Clubs spend fortunes looking for players and occasionally find one down the corridor. Denis Faure is that, and the reception he gets on his first appearance will be different in kind from the one any signing receives.
Junior Ndiaye and a teammate said things this week that will take longer than a week to unsay. It was not about football, and both of them play on Saturday.
He is not being dropped. There is simply nowhere in the formation Montpellier HSC are playing to put a man who does what he does, which is a harder thing to be told than any team sheet.
Successful dribbles: 16. He went past people as if he had been told there was a prize for it, and by the end the full-back had stopped pretending to try.
In brief
SquadWords at Montpellier HSC training over how hard people work
Every footballer has an answer to the question about his boyhood club, and most of them never get to act on it. Giuseppe Leone has, at Montpellier HSC, and the first month will show what that does to a man.
A medical, a signature, a shirt held up in front of a sponsor’s board. Montpellier HSC have done the hard part with Arsenal, and the part that remains is the part supporters actually see.
Terms were offered and declined. Whether it was the wages, the role or the town, nobody at Benfica is saying, and nobody at Montpellier HSC is enjoying the guessing.
Montpellier HSC asked and Trabzonspor said no without discussing a figure. It is the least ambiguous answer in football and the one clubs most often come back to test.
At 22 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.
The academy exists for exactly this morning. Guillaume Dupuis 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.