Mercato, integration of recruits… The TFC is delayed at ignition

• The TFC wants to quickly find the Ligue 1 that it left in the offseason. He started his season with a defeat at home, before a delicate trip to Grenoble on Saturday.
• Deeply overhauled in the offseason, the club is still in the midst of work, with a workforce far from complete.

Shareholders, managers, coach, players and even division, with relegation to Ligue 2. Almost everything has changed this summer at TFC, now chaired by Damien Comolli, French representative of the American fund RedBird Capital Partners. Everything, except the results for now. The formation corroded by Patrice Garande fell on Saturday at the Stadium against the promoted Dunkirk (0-1), for a twentieth official match in a row without a win (19 defeats, one draw). "There was a problem of aggressiveness in the duels, the second balloons," Garande still plagued this Thursday, two days before a trip to Grenoble.

Embarrassing, in a championship tailored more for fighters than for dribbling artists ... Despite the promises of youth, omnipresent in the workforce, these Violets do not seem to have the shoulders to assume the ambitions proclaimed by Comolli: a comeback immediately in the elite before installing the team in the Top 8 of L1. The biggest budget of L2 (amount not disclosed, but probably between 25 and 30 million euros) will therefore have to take out the checkbook to achieve its goal.

With Damien Comolli, the Big Data revolution will sweep through the TFC https://t.co/nPy5EQ6toe

"The transfer window is not over," says Garande, who is now reluctant to talk about a transfer market open until October 5: "I prefer to spend energy on things that I control. "After the Dunkirk failure, the former Caen technician had announced" between four and five arrivals ". Since then, Colombian left-back Deiver Machado has joined goalkeeper Maxime Dupé, Ivorian striker Vakoun Bayo, Cameroonian midfielder Steve Mvoué and his Dutch colleague Branco van den Boomen in the “summer rookies” column.

"At least one reinforcement per line"

Between injuries and late arrivals, only Dupé (holder) and van den Boomen (entered) participated in the opening of the championship. They will be joined by "at least one reinforcement per line", proclaimed Comolli last weekend (before the arrival of defender Machado) on the new Téléfoot channel. Since then, the president of the TFC has decided to close the media tap he had widely opened before the start of the season.

The wings, for lack of real specialists, and the midfield axis (especially if Ibrahim Sangaré leaves) concentrate the research. Fans of statistics, eager to find players to "develop" before reselling them at a profit - "what is certain is that they are not looking for thirty", blows an agent who knows the club well - Toulouse leaders prospect a lot abroad. Newcomers therefore often have to tame both a new country, a fiercest championship and a language they do not necessarily master.

"The apt Bayo and Machado recruits" # GF38TFC, the infirmary point 🚑⤵️https: //t.co/80q52SkWhH pic.twitter.com/JF9jJVxJu1

Thus, according to Garande, Machado speaks only Spanish, while van den Boomen is in the process of learning French. To speed up the adaptation, the technician mixes French and non-French speakers in the various working groups during training, where the language of Molière and Jul remains the official idiom. "The new ones follow fairly intensive French courses," insists Garande, who has chosen a Norwegian captain, central defender Ruben Gabrielsen, who landed in Toulouse in January. “He's starting to understand almost everything,” says the coach. I especially encourage them to communicate with keywords: "play it", "get out", "go". "

Without forgetting "quickly". Because in a fairly homogeneous Ligue 2, the TFC must quickly chain the victories. A word whose meaning and taste he has lost since October 30, 2019, the date of the last success in Niort, in the Coupe de la Ligue (1-2). Ten months ago.

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• Toulouse
• TFC
• Mercato
• League 2
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