After his impressive displays, Matuidi attracted interest from many of France’s top clubs but he eventually moved to Saint Etienne and he has now played over 200 times for the Ligue One outfit. St Etienne struggled in Matuidi’s first two campaigns with the club but he is currently impressing as captain as Saint Etienne sit sixth in the table. The characteristics that have impressed many leading European clubs about Matuidi is that he has very good positional awareness and a great footballing brain, which are essential for a holding midfield player. He also is a competent passer, and just as adept passing short or long, making him very capable of breaking up play and starting off attacks for his side. He can play further forward, and has been utilised by Saint Etienne on the left hand side of midfield, but his abilities are best utilised in a holding midfield role.
Only being 5ft 7 has led to him being compared to another defensive midfielder with a similar stature, Claude Makelele, but at 23 years of age, Matuidi still has a way to go before he can be mentioned in the same breath as the former Chelsea and Real Madrid player. In recent seasons he has also become more disciplined, reducing the amount of cards he receives, and he has become a good tackler, protecting the Saint-Etienne backline well.
His performances have also led to a call up to Laurent Blanc’s France squad for the matches against Belarus and Bosnia-Herzegovina. He came on as a second half substitute against Bosnia for his first cap and Matuidi will be hoping for a lot more in the years to come. Currently valued around £7million, it will be interesting to see whether Comolli and Hodgson deem the player value for money.
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STELLA WDM RESULTS
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TOP TEN LIVERPOOL MOMENTS OF THE DECADE
As we come closer to the end of 2010, I thought it might be good to look back at the last decade and see all the memorable moments Liverpool have had during that time. Of course, the most immediate memory is the Champions League final in 2005, but there are also individual memories such as Gerrard’s goals against Olympiakos in 2005 on the way to the “Miracle in Istanbul,” and the “Gerrard final” of 2006 where Stevie dragged the team to win the FA Cup. Also I have shared memories of instances that occurred under Gerard Houllier’s tenure such as the Golden Goal winner in the UEFA Cup final in 2001, Gary McAllister’s injury time free kick in the Merseyside Derby and John Arne Riise’s goal against Manchester United that nearly broke the goal post in two.
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Just a short comment David – for some reason, the link to the second page of your articles (“Continue Reading on Page 2 . . .”) never seems to work.
Hi Voland, if that link doesn’t work, there is a page ‘2’ button just above the comments section.
Andy Carroll for Liverpool!!
I agree this guy is a big target man, he would be a perfect partner for Torres and would be very good playing up on his own , he is young he is English and he is only going to get better I think we should snap him up before his price sky rockets
no more second rate, so called good french young players!!! sick to the back teeth with average 5-8 mill pound players coming with a so called ” great young player with talent” or good pro with the experience behined him” had enough of crap being brought to Liverpool.
You need to earn the right to play for lfc, not get given a 4 year deal when your injuried!
buy quality better players with good injury records and get less dross in, in terms of numbers of bodies and get 3 -4 quality players in.
mata
llorente
coentrao’
a. young
seems like a gud buy..cant b worse than poulsen…
sell poulsen and get matuid…
I would prefer Moussa Sissoko of Toulouse,he’s younger than Matuidi and more versatile. Cost more though.
I think sunday’s game showed what we need. The left wing remains a clear issue. A winger with genuine pace, the temerity to beat a man and dare i say it, a final ball on their left boot would add so much to our team. Hodgeson is slowly creating a team that has energy in abundance in midfield and some actual guile would surely only improve that (as long as they aren’t incapable of the defensive side of the game as well!). Ashley young and Juan Mata are regularly named as possibilities but for me the exciting name is Hazzard.
Also bringing Dirk further forward again reemphasised the pressing need for more options up front. I don’t mind what kind of striker roy brings in (personally i’d like a big physical presence who presents a threat in the air – what a player crouch would be if he didn’t have a head like a fifty pence piece!) but options are a must!
5’7”!?! Our team needs to get bigger and more athletic, not smaller than it already is!
I know people will keep knocking me for bringing it up again, but I don’t care – the simple fact is that we need more size, athleticism, pace and technical ability in our team! Any transfer not providing at least some of all of those components, should have to be EXCEPTIONAL in a couple of the others to make up for it, and he doesn’t sound exceptional enough to build our midfield around
7 million pound seems like a bargain. we must sell Poulson but keep Lucas then we’ll have a young & strong DM rotation/partnership. Commololi should be able to pull this off
Pls everyone who do you think is better matuidi and steven defour. Both captain @ their club, same age, both midfielder and both are linked with liverpool @ almost same price. I’ll go for steven defour
Defour will be great buy for us, but is he keen to join us right now (i dont think so)…maybe next season after we come through this hard season end at the top of the table 🙂
I would love to see Andy Carroll , Lassana Diarra and Ashley Young sign in January we could sell Poulsen£3-4m and Babe£8ml, then try to conivince Juventus and Galatasary to take up their option to buy on Aquilani£13.5m and Insua£4.5m
defour is a central midfielder which we already have…what we need is a combative defencive midfielder like mascherano..poulsen was supposed to be his replacement but he’s no gud so i’ll prefer matuidi over defour…
That is nice to definitely find a site where the blogger knows what they are talking about.