IT was a save (or rather, two saves) that felt like a goal.
Marseille were drawing 1-1 at home to Rennes with 10 minutes remaining in their most recent Ligue 1 home game when visiting substitute Flavien Tait broke into the hosts’ box and back-heeled the ball into the path of Adrien Hunou.
Hunou took a touch and from a distance of about eight yards, let fly. Steve Mandanda parried the ball, it fell kindly for Hunou and he smashed it back towards goal with all his might. But despite being on the deck as Hunou shaped to shoot for a second time, the Marseille goalkeeper leapt, cat-like, into the air and shot out his right hand to claw the ball to safety. The fans on the Virage Sud behind Mandanda’s goal bellowed their approval. Il Fenomeno was back in business.
Mandanda’s double save against Rennes, which helped his side to secure a point, was a reminder of the exceptional reflexes that moved Marseille’s fans to bestow his Ronaldo-inspired nickname upon him.
Such exhibitions of athleticism were in short supply last season, when a combination of poor form, injuries and concerns about his weight contributed to Mandanda losing his role as trusty back-up to Hugo Lloris in the France squad. But after shedding several kilos at a fitness retreat in the Italian Alps over the summer, he has looked back to his best since the start of the season and the doors of the national team have opened to him once again.
Mandanda’s form over this season’s early weeks was sufficiently impressive to earn him a recall for the current international get-together and with Lloris facing several months out after dislocating his left elbow, it is the Marseille man who will stand between the posts when France line up against Iceland in Friday’s Euro 2020 qualifier in Reykjavík. For a 34-year-old player whose international career appeared to have come to an end only this summer, it represents a spectacular turnaround.
Mandanda has made something of a habit of bouncing back from adversity in recent years. He left Marseille for Crystal Palace in 2016, fulfilling his dream of playing in England, but after an injury-scarred 12 months at Selhurst Park, during which he made only 10 first-team appearances (Premier League clean sheets: 0), he returned to Stade Vélodrome in July 2017 with his tail between his legs.
Mandanda’s return enabled him to break Marseille’s all-time appearance record (he is currently on 529 and counting), but the captaincy had been transferred to Dimitri Payet during his time away and he was saddened by coach Rudi Garcia’s decision to preserve the status quo upon his return. “It affected me,” Mandanda told L’Équipe earlier this year. “I held that role close to my heart.”
Looks like Mandanda will return to France squad as no.1 with Lloris’ serious injury
— Mohammed Ali (@mohammedali_93) October 5, 2019
In his first season back, Marseille reached the Europa League final, losing 3-0 to Atlético Madrid in Lyon, and Mandanda was voted Ligue 1 Goalkeeper of the Year for the fifth time, yet he was dogged by muscular injuries. He sustained a hamstring problem at the beginning of last season, which kept him on the sidelines for a month, and it proved the precursor to a troubled campaign. Marseille’s on-pitch struggles created a hostile atmosphere at the Vélodrome and Mandanda’s corpulence made him an easy target on social media.
“In the 11 seasons I’ve spent here, this is the first one that’s completely passed me by,” he confided to Canal+.
Previously, the Kinshasa-born goalkeeper had always been able to count on his place in the France squad. A popular squad member whose influence behind the scenes is appreciated by national coach Didier Deschamps, he was a member of France’s World Cup-winning squad in Russia and played in the 0-0 group-stage draw with Denmark.
But his struggles with Marseille last season coincided with the emergence of a new band of younger French goalkeepers including Lille’s Mike Maignan, Alphonse Areola, who is currently on loan at Real Madrid from Paris Saint-Germain, and Benjamin Lecomte, who left Montpellier for Monaco during the summer. When Deschamps named his squad for France’s end-of-season fixtures against Bolivia, Turkey and Andorra, all three were included alongside Lloris and Mandanda was left out.
“It’s a choice of the moment,” Deschamps explained. “Steve had a difficult season. He had a few injuries and his performances were below what he was capable of.”
400 – Steve Mandanda will make tonight his 400th Ligue 1 appearance (all with Marseille), becoming the first player to play 400 games with the same Ligue 1 team in the 21st century. Legend. @OM_English #OMASSE pic.twitter.com/F89sKYZ3iV
— OptaJean (@OptaJean) September 1, 2019
The former Le Havre goalkeeper was once again overlooked when Deschamps announced his squad for last month’s Euro 2020 qualifiers against Albania and Andorra. But having rediscovered his influence – as well as the captain’s armband – under new Marseille coach André Villas-Boas, he is now perfectly placed to profit from Lloris’s misfortune.
Despite having only won 28 caps to Lloris’s 114, Mandanda once appeared destined to become France’s long-term number one. He made his international debut six months before Lloris, in May 2008, and with Grégory Coupet being phased out after Euro 2008, it was to Mandanda who Raymond Domenech – France’s then national coach – first turned.
Mandanda started France’s 2010 World Cup qualifying campaign in the number one jersey, only to fall behind Lloris in the pecking order midway through 2009. Lloris, two years’ Mandanda’s junior, did not look back and would go on to achieve footballing immortality by holding the World Cup trophy aloft as captain in Moscow last summer after France’s 4-2 win over Croatia in the final.
Mandanda is unlikely to harbour any realistic ambitions of supplanting his long-term rival as France’s number one. But for now, at least, he is back where he feels he belongs.
