Lyon – MHSC: the big downgrade for captain Téji Savanier after the controversy against Puy ?

The MHSC management and its president reportedly decided to remove the armband in the middle after his remarks in Le Puy.

Friday morning, Laurent Nicollin pushed open the door of the Grammont training center. As he has rather become accustomed to doing at this time, the Montpellier president addressed his group. But before the latter took the road to Lyon at around 9:30 a.m., this speech was more scrutinized than usual. From this intervention in the locker room and their privacy that some executives protect according to a very variable geometry, the major information ended up leaking: two weeks after his remarks in Puy-en-Velay and the shipwreck in the Coupe de France (4-0), Téji Savanier should have lost his captain's armband.

Fine and benching

On December 21, the midfielder responded to supporters from Le Puy who were teasing him about Montpellier's last place in L1. “When you get €210,000, it's OK”, he retorted, before apologizing in a club press release that had not convinced the Ultras of Butte Paillade 1991, authors in response of a scathing text.

After the holidays, the sanction finally fell. It should be accompanied by a financial component, according to L'Équipe, and could go with a substitute status, this Saturday in Lyon.

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This epilogue further aggravates an unprecedented period for the playmaker. Far from the untouchable status he assumed upon his return to his training club in 2019, “TJ” is now learning to live with a tarnished image. And crystallizes a growing discontent among supporters who point to his new Ferrari or his plump figure, and especially his increasingly lackluster performances.

Over the course of a season that he has experienced with rare intermittence, the most used player in the squad has posted statistics (1 goal and 3 assists) far from his standards.

What successor ?

What will his rebound be like ? With a year and a half to go until the end of his contract, and at 33 years old, could Savanier see this as the beginning of the end of a story ? These questions will accompany the wait for an answer on the field from a player whose talent remains undeniable, even more so within a squad that is in dire need of creativity. And now from a captain, at least punctual. The natural candidates – and not divisive ones – are not rushing in…

By sanctioning the man who is still the most expensive recruit in the history of the MHSC (€9 million), Laurent Nicollin has in any case banged his fist on the table. Between four eyes and far from any media haste. On Friday, he and his entourage remained impervious to solicitations. Without any real surprise. “I don't need to write an article in L'Équipe or Midi Libre to say how we resolved the Sakho case,” Laurent Nicollin explained in these columns in March 2024, a few months after the altercation between Mamadou Sakho and Michel Der Zakarian. This affair, which occurred in October 2023, marked a negative turn in the Montpellier season. A little over a year later, the Savanier case has not yet delivered its consequences.

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