Opening
On 12 July Loris Mouyokolo led Grenoble out for a friendly wearing the captain's armband. On 19 July the bus to the pre-season camp left without him, and that evening L'Équipe explained why: the defender was joining Baltika for 1.5 million euros on a four-year contract, with the move to be made official shortly.
The deal hung for almost two weeks, but the ending was readable in advance: on 22 July Grenoble presented his replacement, 23-year-old Farouk Limouri from Eindhoven, and the local paper wrote that Mouyokolo's future "will be written far from Grenoble". Here is who Kaliningrad took from Ligue 2 and why Talalaev wanted a Frenchman who lost his place at his home club, ruptured an Achilles and still made it to captain.
