Still a centre-forward, the Tocopillano played 62 minutes in OM’s 1-0 victory over Rennes to qualify for the French tournament. Igor Tudor’s team maintains its performance at 100% in 2023.
The French Cup is shaping up to be a real title option for the Olympic Marseille , since he is already excluded from European competitions and in Ligue 1 he is running behind Paris Saint-Germain, the immense candidate for the crown. This objective is still relevant for the most popular cast in French football. This Friday, for the round of 16, they beat Rennes 1-0, with Alexis Sánchez incumbent. A slight difference was enough for them to continue the race.
As is customary at OM and, beyond the complaints about his position, the Chilean national team was the reference in attack in the 3-4-2-1 that coach Igor Tudor still uses. The novelty was that the tocopillano used the 10 on his back. Indeed, in the Cup, the numbering of holders goes from 1 to 11, the old way. He did not wear the number 70 he wears in Ligue 1. Alexis had an interesting first half, even though he didn’t convert. Active and sharp, he created danger for the Rennes defense on several occasions.
It was difficult for Marseille to violate the opposing defense, despite a certain supremacy. In the 9th minute, a superb free kick from the Ukrainian Malinovskyi hit a post. The next minute, Sánchez, who had defined on the goalkeeper, had a goal canceled. The advanced position of the Niño Maravilla was sanctioned. On more than one occasion during the first half, Alexis Sánchez went diagonally to receive a filtered pass, but fell offside. At 17′, he fired a header which reached the location of Dogan Alemdar’s goal.
Olympique was more than Stade de Rennes, yet it did not reflect that on the scoreboard. He lacked the last stitch to find the goals, more precision in the last pass. Luckily for Tudor, the situation has reversed in the plugin.
At 59′, Matteo Guendouzi brought the score to 1-0 for the locals by cutting the ball with his right foot. The ball has a slight deflection on its way to the goal, leaving the visiting 1 unresponsive. I relax for OM. With the advantage minimal, the Marseille coach made changes and one of those who came out was Alexis Sánchez. At 62′, he was replaced by Bamba Dieng, a change that has been repeated lately.
Towards the end of the match, Rennes went on the attack in search of equality, taking advantage of the fact that Marseille gave up space by falling back further, healing the gap. In the discounts, he almost made it 1-1 with a cross that hit a post, before the stretch by Pau López. A backup of agony.
OM have achieved the goal of reaching the knockout stages of the Coupe de France and are maintaining their performance at 100% so far in 2023. Five games, five wins: 2-1 against Montpellier, 2-0 against Hyéres (Coupe), 2-0 against Troyes, 3-1 against Lorient and today 1-0 against Rennes. The next match will take place on January 28 against Guillermo Maripán’s Monaco, in the first division championship.
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Source: Latercera
I’m Scott Moore, a professional writer and journalist based in the US. I’ve been writing for various publications for over 8 years now, and have been working as an author at athletistic for the past five years. My work has been featured by some of the leading sports websites and magazines across Europe.
