Source: Telegraph
JeanPaul Marna's tricks could give Fulham the slip in FA Cup
The Kettering striker, who has wound up in small-town Northamptonshire from Senegal via Paris, is a leading exponent of futsal, the miniature indoor version of the game in which the forward's attributes of creativity, improvisation and all-round slipperiness are highly prized. [LNB]Marna acknowledges that futsal, while only five-a-side, can only enhance a player's art in 11-a-side. Forwards are so scrupulously marked in futsal that they can hardly fail to sharpen their instincts in finding better positions or in developing a surer first touch. It is just disorientating to hear the 27-year-old expound this refined philosophy in the muddy surrounds of Rockingham Road. [LNB]Almost a year has passed since Marna last played futsal in anger, when he and the French national team suffered a dispiriting defeat in the European Championships. He concluded then, as a fully-fledged member of Kettering's first team, that he was devoting insufficient time to either code. His week would consist of travelling to France on Monday morning, honing his football skills on Tuesday and Wednesday, returning on Thursday before training on Friday for a match on Saturday: a near impossible balancing act, even for an overworked non-League player. [LNB]"It was too tiring to continue," Marna admits. "You have to make a choice. When you return to 11-a-side, it's a totally different experience. It can take another two weeks to return to your normal game."[LNB]While exhausted by this dual existence, Marna is positively evangelical about futsal's benefits to a striker and points to Joe Cole, the Chelsea winger, as the most conspicuous English proof. England, unlike France, are represented in this year's European finals in Bulgaria and the forward explains: "It is a small pitch, a smaller area, so more people are marking you all the time. It helps you on the big pitch because you need more touch. England can develop more skilful players because of it, like Cole."[LNB]There are no records to suggest that Cole ever followed the futsal player's traditional development through street football; he became such a force at Chelsea because Jose Mourinho recognised his talent for running at wing-backs, and for keeping the ball by virtue of his intricate footwork. Marna reflects similar skills, even if his progress has been less spectacular. The trouble is that futsal has encouraged, arguably, a slightly louche attitude to his football, shown most vividly in a celebrated incident at Cambridge City in the FA Trophy last month. [LNB]Marna had run out on to a quagmire of a pitch in only moulded studs, resulting in a display of such cringeworthy haplessness that manager Mark Cooper had to substitute him after 14 minutes. "He was slipping and sliding all over the place," Cooper said. "I'm not prepared to put up with that lack of professionalism." In mitigation, Marna said: "I didn't have any studs. I had never worn them before."[LNB]It has been a frustrating career for Marna, who was passed over at Paris St Germain's academy aged 18, forcing his journey to England. Futsal has injected much subtlety into his game but if he hopes, at Kettering, to achieve greater prominence by reaching the fifth round of the FA Cup, he will have to match his guile with some grit. [LNB]
