After previous season Tours was happy because of winning French Pro A league. Will they manage to repeat the success from last year? Everybody who was keeping track with transfers of other French teams knows that it will not be easy task. Do you agree?
Paris Volley was left by the setter Yannic Bazin who in next season will play for Turkish club – Galatasaray Istanbul. Ondrej Boula from Czech Republic will replace Bazin. He has a chance to play with his countryman Jiri Novak and new signed up players – Enrique Escalante and Markus Steuerwald. Also Marcel Gromadowski left Paris – he came back to Polish league after 3 years’ break.
Montpellier gained the large number of newly contracted players for season 2010/11. Among the new players there are as many as three spikers – Hugo Alimi, Vincent Duhagon and Guillaume Quesque. They are supposed to be led to victories by two setters: Pierrick Lyneel who during last season was representing Sete and the ex-player of the last year’s champion team of France, Tours VB – Loic Le Marrec who signed three-yrs contract. In the middle, we will also see the new player- Franck Lafitte who is moving to the Montpellier from Toulouse. He’s going to help Brachard who prolonged his contract for the next season.
We can’t forget about the champions’ team. Tours VB repleaced 8(!) players and only 3 of them played in last season in French PRO A league. Among Tours’ new players is Brazilian setter Rafael Redwitz who last season spent in Polish league playing for Resovia Rzeszow. But the hottest transfer was made by Sete. It’s not exacly a transfer but this club prolonged Jakub Vesely’s contract what was great move especially in view of his very good game during World Championships.
Other teams also contracted interesting new faces. You can check out all of them on club’s web sites.
What do you think, which team will be able to sing “We are the champions” at the end of the season? Tours again? In my opinion they’ll have a good oponent in Arago de Sete V.B like in last season. But that’s all is just in the paper, How it will look in reality? We’ll see.