Cissokho’s Redcarpet Homecoming

By: John | July 20th, 2009

Aly’s Break-out Performances this Year in the CL this Past Season Put Him On the Radar of Some the Biggest Clubs in Europe.

When Aly Cissokho left France back in June ‘08 , probably only a handful of people- including himself- were even aware, and even fewer in Portugal to be sure. He made the switch from his formative club FC Gueugnon for a the paltry sum of 500,000 Euros. But now, Aly returns to France as the 15mill Euro-Man, and makes the jump from a team that was relegated to Division Three after his first season, to one of the powerhouses of French football, and seven-time L1 champions.

After having intial bids for Cissokho turned down; seeing AC Milan swoop in and almost sign Aly from under our noses- a deal which later fell apart; and after weeks of excruciating negotiations with Porto’s pain-in-the-ass, raise-the-bar and make-you-jump-through-as-many-hoops-as-I-please president Jorge Nuno Pinto da Costa, Lyon finally have their man, “bad teeth and all.” Just kidding, Aly has already passed a physical administered in Portugal by Lyon team doctor Emmanuel Ohrant.

JMA shelled-out more than fifty times the original purchase price that Porto payed for Aly. The deal is for five years and worth 15mill + 20% of his future resale value! I know JMA is trying to put together L1’s mini-version of Los Galacticos, but this might have been too much to pay for a French leftback that isn’t named Evra or Abidal. Anyway, I know absolutely nothing about Cissokho, except that he seemed to have had a fine past season with Os Dragões, and had a break-out performance this year in the CL, against Man U which put him on the international scene, by keeping Ronaldo pretty quite in their two matches.

Regardless, we hopefully now have a world-class leftback, and can send the “praying mantis,” as my friend at the Lens blog has most aptly named him, aka Fabio Grosso, back to Italia, because his laziness and apathy have been very hard to stomach lately- I’m still bitter we had to unload Nadir Belhadj because of this walking skeleton.

But I digress, anyhow, hopefully our backline just got a lot tighter, and our leftside has been solidified for some time to come. And finally, JMA has struck a PR coup and is putting Lyon on the tongues of many in the soccer world with his no-nonsense accquisition of bigname players and making a big club like AC Milan look petty for making excuses not to pay-up the cash, in their bid to sign Cissoko.