A week before the resumption of the Championship, the CVB faces Montpellier, for the first trophy of the season of which it is the defending champion.
A final to start the season? This is the very principle of the Super Cup, which pits the winner of the Cup against the French champion of last year, a week before the opening of Ligue A. Double holder of the trophy, Chaumont, at home like last year, dreams of a new success to establish their status as the dominant club in a competitive landscape where Tours and Montpellier, in particular, are also competing. Sacred in May for the eighth time in its history after half a century of scarcityIt is precisely expected that the Hérault club tonight at the Palestre, under the spotlight of the BeIn Sports 2 cameras, will debut its new crown.
With the arrival of a new passer, the Brazilian Thiago Veloso (ex-Toulouse) and the fresh return of the “globalists”, the Blues center-back Nicolás Le Goff and the Argentine receiver Ezequiel Palacios, the team led by Olivier Lecat will probably not give all its potential but his organizational skills will set the tone in a season that will also be expected in the Champions League.
And Chaumont? Launched in a true reconstruction operation after the march to Italy of its Cuban quartet -Melgajero, Gutiérrez, Herrera and Alonso-, the CVB52 recruited from the French (Pierre Toledo, Gilles Lomba), bets on the accurate left-hander of the Czech team, Patrik Indra (24 years old) and especially recorded the great return of its former captain, Nathan Wounembaina. Almost 38 years old, the Cameroonian international, great architect of the title in 2017, is coming out of a discreet exercise in Verona. But his technical mastery, leadership and experience convinced sports director Jiri Cerha to bring him home.
“The idea is the same as when I first came to Haute-Marne (in 2013), It’s about winning as many titles as possible.”says Wounembaina. The message is clear.