Monday, August 02, 2010

Koscielny turns his eyes to Norway

Not pointing East...
The former central defender from Lorient who showed well this weekend for his new employer - Arsenal - during the Emirates Cup has made it clear that he is looking for his international future to be with France. The Polish FA made a call to see if he was interested in playing for his grandfather's nation. This is not surprising since Koscielny has never showcased for the youth set up for France and the player had made noises that he would be open to both countries. Of course his solid season last year in France as well as move to Arsenal has propelled him into everyone's radar. Does Laurent Blanc's radar have the central defender on it? I would think so. As I stated in an earlier post central defense needs to be a high priority for the new regime. Gallas is likely not to figure in the plans for Les Bleus and Abidal clearly will not be slotted back in the center of the defense moving forward. Blanc will need to determine what his partnership will be and hopefully will stick with that tandem...assuming it shows well! For me, Koscielny is clearly one of the candidates for that role. As well as Mexes, Ciani, Planus, Squillaci, Toulalan to name a few. Clearly the cupboard for Les Bleus is not bare when it comes to central defenders, the challenge will be to find the correct pairing for Les Bleus.

5 comments:

Philip said...

I think Ciani is very promising. But I am saying that cause he scores alot of goals for a defender I actually don't know how good he is in defending. I also would like to see Toulalan in the back.

Anonymous said...

I would think a ciani-planus pairing would be effective; that seems to work well enough for bordeaux

GFC said...

Ciani does get his fair share of goals. He is a strong defender, but still has some learning to do with regards to positioning. I think leveraging Planus-Ciani would be interesting due to the fact they train and play together for club, however I think that Koscielny and Mexes have a leg up on Planus (even thought the Bordeaux man was part of the World Cup squad)

Others to think about Sakho from PSG and Kaboul from Tottenham

JLP said...

For Norway:

Starters: Mexes-Rami

Subs: Koscielny, Kaboul, Sakho

GFC said...

@JLP Mexes - Rami would be very interesting. Sakho and Ciani would also be interesting since both are natural left footers...