Reds striker Djibril Cisse, currently out until October with a broken leg, claims he would have been happy to have stayed at Anfield, but was asked to leave by manager Rafael Benitez.
Djibs invited Sky Sports News cameras into his manor house in Frodsham and spoke about how the moves to try and sell him to Marseilles. He said he had been perfectly happy at Anfield and wanted to stay, bet in the end said there was no choice for him: “I have no reason to leave. I feel good here, I have good friends here, I get on with the staff. I have got married here, my son is here. Everything is really good for me here, it’s really hard. If I have the choice, I’d stay here a long time. But I guess I don’t have the choice.”
Cisse says it wasn’t what he wanted, but the decision to leave was pretty much common sense: “Really, I have been asked nicely to leave the club. When you are asked to do something and when the manager asks you to leave, and he has the power to play you or not, then it’s better to leave.”
He also wanted to try and straighten out some confusion about comments he’d made about Marseilles. They were the team the player always supported when growing up, and to say he likes them never meant he wanted to leave Liverpool just to join them. After being told he could leave, he mentioned Marseilles as one option he’d like: “Then I said I was interested in Marseille. It makes me laugh how people twist things when you speak. I always said ‘yes, I like Marseille’ but he said Real Madrid was the club of his heart and that one day he would like to manage there, but that does not mean he will go there next season.”
“I’ve said since I was kid that I always supported Marseille but that doesn’t mean I’m desperate to go to there like I read in the papers. I signed here for five years and wanted to see out that contract but it looks like he does not want me.”
Cisse was filmed walking on crutches around the gardens of his home, no plaster on his leg, and knowing his powers of recovery it would be no surprise if he came back even before October.