Lassana Diarra: The nomadic midfielder tasked with stabilising Paris Saint-Germain's unsettled season

​Lassana Diarra won’t have many friends to greet when his new club Paris Saint-Germain welcome Marseille to the Parc des Princes on Sunday.

The former OM captain, who left the club in unceremonious circumstances almost a year to the date, joined the French league leaders last month on a free transfer.

While he missed Paris Saint-Germain's first leg defeat to Real Madrid last week, the Frenchman is poised to make his first start in France's most watched domestic fixture, Le Classique.

And after rejuvenating his career in southern France - even taking the captain's armband - he has quickly forgotten any connection to his former employers:

“Paris Saint-Germain represents a lot to me and, with the international dimension the club has taken in recent seasons, it is every player's dream to play here," said the Frenchman after signing an 18-month contract.

"I am lucky enough to make this dream come true, to know what it feels like to play at the Parc des Princes wearing the Rouge et Bleu."

The 32-year-old’s arrival in Paris was an unexpected turn of events for a player who looked lost in an Emirati wilderness.

Diarra terminated his contract at his last club Al Jazira, of Abu Dhabi, after featuring in just five games. They were his ninth club, and just the latest addition to a passport that boasts stamps from destinations as varied as Portsmouth and Makhachkala, via Madrid.

But the journeyman midfielder, who wound up in Paris on a free transfer, may well be Unai Emery’s most important signing of the season.

Diarra walks into a side reeling from a season characterised by ego-driven personality clashes and disputes. The result has seen a manager play second fiddle to the whims of cliques, reacting to controversy and embarrassments, whether it be arguments who have the right to take penalties, such as was seen in September in PSG’s victory of Lyon, or players returning late to training after the winter break.

"The role of penalties is clear," Emery said after ‘penalty-gate’.

"But what is important is that we have a strong group, a strong dressing room and that the we work together to face all of the competitions we have ahead of us."

Yet for Emery, forging that unity has been but a pipe dream. It was perhaps inevitable; the by-product of signing a player on the premise of making him bigger than the club itself.

But PSG’s defeat to Real Madrid could well define the campaign. Beforehand, he attempted to assert his authority by dropping captain Thiago Silva for ‘tactical reasons’. During the game itself, the Parisians were on top for long spells, grabbing a vital away goal through Adrien Rabiot, yet they were undone by a combination of strange substitutions, and critically, a familiar weakness in the heart of midfield.

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Diarra’s arrival, for all its of surprise, was long overdue. While the glitz and the glamour of Neymar and Kylian Mbappe stole the headlines, the cracks in PSG’s midfield went unnoticed, until the injury of Thiago Motta.

Emery’s 4-3-3 requires a deep sitting midfielder, vital for anchoring their attacking play. It was something Motta did sufficiently last season, and Grzegorz Krychowiak had offered previously at the Basque manager’s former side Sevilla.

But when Blaise Matuidi and Krychowiak were carted off to Juventus and West Brom as appeasement to the gods of Financial Fair Play in the summer, PSG became reliant on the Brazilian midfielder. Emery’s options were sparse, for Adrien Rabiot has no interest in playing the role, while Christopher Nkunku, an academy product, is far too inexperienced, featuring 11 times this season, but playing for only 101 minutes in total.

When a 35-year-old Motta with a track record of knee problems inevitably got injured, the Ligue 1 leaders were left exposed.

Emery knew he had to resolve the issue as quickly as possible: "The club is working on the possibility of improving the team,” Emery told AFP at the start of the January window.

“The discussion with Antero (Henrique, PSG’s sporting director) is that at the specific position of holding midfield there is only Thiago Motta.

“He has been injured for months. We played with Adrien Rabiot who can play this position, also Giovani Lo Celso, but this is the only discussion.”

Diarra then, a player who has spent most his career with a packed suitcase in his right hand and a for sale sign in his left, was the man set to be tasked with settling PSG’s creaking midfield.

There is more than a little irony to giving a man who is famed for being unable to settle the challenge of stabilising the Parisian cause.

But PSG paid the price for not plugging the gap sooner. Diarra was unable to get himself fit in time to face Real Madrid last week, leaving Giovani Lo Celso, an attacking midfielder by trade, exposed at the rear of PSG’s forward-thinking midfield, conceding a penalty for a foul on Ton Kroos, before almost getting himself sent off for persistent fouling.

Emery has come under fire not only for the result against Madrid, but also the way he selected his side, notably dropping his captain just hours before kick-off, to the ire of the Brazilian contingent in the dressing room. He also omitted Thiago Motta from the squad entirely, interpreted as an attempt to reassert authority on a squad that resembles powerful individualists tied together in an uneasy alliance.

The substitutions he made during the game against Real, the most bizarre of which saw full-back Thomas Meunier replace top scorer Edinson Cavani, further served to sharpen the knives of his detractors.

Champions League success is the only palliative treatment that can salvage the three-time Europa League-winning coach's Parisian stay. When Real come to Paris in two weeks time, he will be more reliant than ever on the nomadic Diarra to stabilise a ship taking on water, both on the field, and off it.

On Sunday, against the club that resurrected his career, Diarra will have the chance to show Emery whether he truly can offer the stability he craves, in the biggest domestic fixture of the season.