Scouting a CB : 🇫🇷 Mamadou Sarr
How to Analyse a Centre-Back | Tournoi de Toulon 2023
I posted this quick thread "How to scout a young CB" during the 2023 Toulon Tournament, or Tournoi Maurice Revello.
U18 Annual tournament free to watch and stream online since 1984 here
At that point in June 2023 ; Mamadou Sarr was in OL’s bomb squad as a Gambardella Winner and U17 Euro Winner. Makes sense.
Some notes on the basket case of a club at OL ; taken over by Private Eaquity cowboy John Textor - with some uncanny similarities.
On an unrelated note, Chelsea signed Mamadou Sarr in January 2025, or Strasbourg ; or maybe it’s a separate budget, or maybe the 22 Holdco is losing 1.165 Billion in two years anyway with 755.2 million repayable by 2027.
What's there to like? I'm gonna use a few clips from that France-Costa Rica game.
France started with a back three of… Leny Yoro, Mamadou Sarr and Jérémy Jacquet.
Fairs.
Moving in space
Obvious but these are the top end talents of their age groups ability wise. Not every 18yo CB is 6ft2 and can move.
Is your motion fluid in all directions? Can you change gear? Can you do two things at once? These are the scouting cues
1. Anticipates the mismatch (diag on the short fullback) so keeps running
2. Rebounds are chaos. Requires agility: on toes, balance over feet, eyes on the ball
3. Change of direction with strong right and open the gate with left foot pointing.
4. Strong left block to cut again
Feel it, dread it.
Keep the opponent at a distance by
5 - tapping his right arm so that it can't go in front
6 - see how he sets his palm on chest to keep a distance and put off balance. Ball under control with farthest foot from the opponent Most young CBs are yelled at to do it, do it and forget the ball (and get mugged) Can you multitask?
Defending crosses
7- MS reads the motion of the player on the ball and sees the right arm swinging = long ball.
He's already sprinting back (other CB isnt)
8- Sprinting, slightly bit stiff but he's over 6ft1 so that makes sense
9- Decelerating balance backwards to slow down momentum
10- So that the defensive stance is set before the positive touch from the winger.
11- See where he cuts (right). Exactly in line with the far post, without looking. Knows his way inside the box
12- gets out for the box on the negative passes, to see the crosser and runners
13- organise markings
14- see how he backtracked in line with the far post again.
Reading of the trajectory is good There's two types of headers - unopposed (this) - opposed headers
Lots of young CBs struggle with it also because they only ever experience it in some games.
Can you pass the football?
My shitpost was that: oh that's Benoît Rightiashile.
The same Academy trademark hammer pass.
- left foot pointing in the direction
- hit the ball just a above the middle but straight
- follow-up in the intended direction to make it gain speed on the first rebound.
This is the difference between Badiashile and Disasi.
They couldn't be more different.
Badiashile was trained in a countryside Pole Espoir refining all his technical skills between 13-15 experimenting all positions. Disasi was a forward as U15 outside the academy system (Paris FC was elite grassroots then), late peaker even if poached by Reims by Loz Stew at Monaco.
Hence the odd bobbly pass because he tops it, or hits it underneath (hence why it hits shinpads)
Pathway
Mamadou Sarr is the son of Pape Sarr, a former Lens, Brest and Senegalese international who reached the 2002 World Cup after beating France in the Group Stage
2022
Mamadou Sarr - Coupe Gambardella winner in 2022 (equivalent of the FA Youth Cup), OL’s first in 25 years - was offered a 3 year contract by Jean-Michel Aulas, the talismanic OL chairman (1997 - 2023) who can spot a good player when he sees one.
and UEFA Euro U17 winner with France three weeks later.
in VIP box (tbf, the only one who sensed danger) to witness… the Dario Essugoal
2022-2023
What followed was a 2022-23 season spent in the bomb squad / B team.
7 minutes for a OL team failing to win 20 / 38 games and rock bottom at Christmas.
However playing 18 games for the B team, relegated from National 2 (which is tier 4 ; challenging for pro clubs, but surely well whithin their remit to win more than 8 games)
2023-24
In 2023-24 ; “barred by the concurrence” of some next 27 year old bloke called “Adryelson”, from… Textor owned Botafogo.
Probably recommended by their Twitter Scouts, hired to score points on the internet.
How do you explain that Gambardella + Euro U17 winner Mamadou Sarr can’t play over some washed up 27 year old Brazilian CB already shipped out at Anderlecht.
6 months before being loaned to Molenbeek (you know, the financially struggling Belgian club Textor also owns, who casually sign players for 30 million loaned with no fee at transfer banned OL).
Nothing dodgy there.
Mamadou Sarr reached the final of the U19 Euros in 2024 -
coming on with Mathis Amougou there
Another one Strasbourg fans will enjoy watching - or not, once Andrey Santos gets shipped out to Bayern or PSG - the 755.2 million loan to be reimbursed by 2027 won’t wait some of the lottery tickets to come (Amou)good.
However backing up Yoni Gomis and Jérémy Jacquet, and coming on in the final 2-0 down with 10 men when Gomis was sent off
to form a 3 man defence
OL up to U15 are the best Academy in the country because they figured out that the most qualified coaches with UEFA Pro or Elite Youth have to keep their U9 U11 U13 etc... Aulas figured everything out - now spends his retirement witnessing Textor scavenging his club.
John Textor’s OL are one stage more advanced than Chelsea when we’re thinking PE, asset stripping and wool over eyes.
Bomb squad, Twitter Scouts for PR, selling the women’s team, talks of shutting down the academy, and “interesting” transfers whithin the group - under the cloud of a net loss of €117 million for the first half of 2024-25. Your club is next
That somewhat, continues to attract new investors in that hole-ridden wicker basket.
Or basket case of a club ; with banners asking the club captain and academy players to fuck off ; players as “assets” and winding up the crowd against players when they want to get rid of them.
Planting ideas here and there ; sell the academy building “to refocus on the first team”, which idiots will understand as “Academy will train on the next pitch and use the same tactical galaxy brain system” ; but the double entendre is that they think it’s a waste of money and will probably scrap it sooner than later.
No smoke without fire ; “unclear future with John Textor”
Snippets :
A discussion is currently underway in the upper echelons of the Lyon academy to potentially eliminate all teams up to the U15 level.
It’s not the Academy we’ve seen in the past, we’ve let people in charge, who are unfit to work for an academy such as OL. We built a machine for competition, with teams set out to win and challenge in training leading to 5 or 6 players making it per age group.
