2023-08-16 04:58:18
At the end of the return match of the third qualifying round in the Champions League between Olympique de Marseille (OM) and Panathinaikos, at the Stade Vélodrome, in Marseille, on August 15, 2023. CHRISTOPHE SIMON / AFP
There are phrases that stick to the course of a coach. That pronounced the day before the match which was to oppose, Tuesday, August 15, Olympique de Marseille (OM) to the Greek club Panathinaikos for the third qualifying round of the Football Champions League risks weighing heavily in the emerging relationship of the Spaniard Marcelino, new technician for the Marseille club, arrived at the Canebière at the end of June.
To the question of a journalist who asked him how he had prepared his players for a potential penalty shootout to force the passage towards the dam of the most prestigious of European cups, the Marseille coach replied on Monday: “I don’t think about penalties. Our goal as a team is to win the game in 90 minutes. We will seek this qualification, we have solutions. »
Twenty-four hours later, this response resonates at best as a miscommunication, at worst, as the harbinger of the industrial accident experienced by OM, ejected from the 2023-2024 Champions League even before having could access it. On Wednesday, after a match started in a fiery atmosphere but which ended under the whistles of the Stade Vélodrome, the Marseille team was eliminated on penalties (3-5) by the Greeks who were certainly lucky but deserving.
Read also: Champions League: Olympique de Marseille eliminated despite their victory (2-1) against Panathinaikos
Defeated six days earlier in Athens (0-1), Marcelino’s team nevertheless won the return match after extra time (2-1). But this victory was for nothing. In total for the two games, OM were on a par with Panathinaikos (2-2). And the missed shot on goal by Matteo Guendouzi, unfortunate hero of the evening, was enough to kill all his hopes of integrating, for the second consecutive year, the elite of European football.
At the end of the meeting, in a press conference in the atmosphere of a funeral vigil, Marcelino, voice lowered, first wanted to apologize to the Marseille supporters. Before invoking the spell to explain the failure. “Fate did not want us to qualify today”, assured the coach, comparing the twenty shots of his team, including ten on target, with the two meager Greek attempts. “We can’t blame our players who gave everything for 120 minutes. The superiority of our team was evident (…) We are all responsible”continued the Spanish coach, who was surely hoping for another type of gift for his fifty-eighth birthday celebrated the day before.
twist of fate
In view of a match that looks like a Greek tragedy, punctuated by interventions from the video assistance (VAR) like so many twists, it is difficult not to recognize that nothing has turned in the direction of the Marseillais.
You have 59.44% of this article left to read. The following is for subscribers only.
#Olympique #Marseille #evening #air #Greek #tragedy