The return of the big nights? The crazy end to the Olympique de Marseille season begins this Thursday, April 28 in Rotterdam (at 8:50 p.m. on M6), against the Dutch from Feyenoord. A semi-final first leg of the Europa Conference League, the “smallest” of the European Cups of course, but a continental meeting all the same. And the only one at this level for a French club this year. Ligue 1 then takes over on Sunday 1is May, with the reception of Lyon. OM’s objective: to maintain a six-point lead over their pursuers to finish well and truly, three championship days later, runner-up to an already crowned PSG.
→ ANALYSIS. Europa League: Villarreal, the triumph of peripheral football
An OM playing for the top on two counts, this had not happened since 2009. The Olympians had been eliminated in the quarter-finals of the Europa League by Chakhtar Donetsk (future winner of the event), by finishing second in Ligue 1 just three points from the Girondins de Bordeaux, at the time still in majesty. Of course, the Time.news retains that Marseille was dolphin of PSG in 2013. But the Phocaeans were then out of the Europa League from the group stage. Conversely, in 2018, they had reached the final in the Europa League, dryly beaten by Atlético Madrid (0-3). But in Ligue 1, stumbling down the home stretch, they had only clinched fifth place.
A president and a coach in phase
This season, Marseille is doing quite well, but without any major setbacks. As if something had finally calmed down, after a long period of instability. Since the takeover of the club in October 2016 by the American magnate Frank McCourt, it is a beginning of balance, fragile but real. Probably because the right people are in the right places. In the forefront of which Pablo Longoria, the president of the club, ex-sports director promoted in February 2021 in place of Jacques-Henri Eyraud.
The 35-year-old Spaniard, with his passion for football and his encyclopedic knowledge of the players, very quickly got involved in a fairly hectic summer transfer window. Even constrained by limited finances, the club has renewed its workforce with a dozen arrivals. Winning bets, like the international Mattéo Guendouzi, the kingpin of the midfield, the Brazilian Gerson, often decisive at the end of the season, or the defender William Saliba, a revelation recently called up to the Blues.
→ REREAD. Football: three European Cups or nothing
Pablo Longoria was also able to find the coach who could set his score to music: the Argentinian Jorge Sampaoli, recruited for his ” philosophy “ game. The most repeated term throughout the season, by leaders and players alike. OM is therefore a style, “the school of positional football”, defines Pablo Longoria. That is to say a game of possession, posed by the Iberian technician Juanma Lillo, assistant to Jorge Sampaoli for a year in Seville (in 2016-2017), and who officiates today alongside the playing master Pep Guardiola at Manchester City.
A project built on a game identity
“We are developing a very marked project, with a game identity. There are always moments that will make us doubt our ideas. But we must insist on our principles,” confided Pablo Longoria to The Team in December 2021. And Marseille insists, with often changing tactical plans and sometimes lackluster performances. But the direction imposed, the players follow it without hesitation. “For me, the greatest satisfaction is to see a group that has understood this idea and defends it at each meeting”, also supports Jorge Sampaoli.
Keep the ball, make the play, find the flaw. Supporters appreciate it. The proof in the recent reversal against Nantes at the Vélodrome. A bad start, but a 3-2 victory in the end. “Coward mentality, like Guendouzi”, displayed on a banner the group of supporters Marseille Trop Puissant. They like it, guts on the table, all the way. And Jorge Sampaoli to applaud “this tranquility” which ultimately leads to success.
Champions League goal
If OM manages to deal with a hellish schedule (seven games in twenty-eight days if it reaches the European final), the team can finally fulfill its contract. “Playing the Champions League every year is an obligation. At the end of the season, OM must qualify for this competition,” hammered Frank McCourt at the dawn of this championship year. Ambition goes through this, the club has known this since the start of its owner’s “project”.
The pandemic in 2020 had offered him the place of dolphin by interrupting the championship after 28 days. The following European campaign had been catastrophic (only one victory in six games in the group stage). This season seems to be writing a much more constructed prologue. Like the beginning of a beautiful story.
———–
Supporters allowed to travel
Fans will finally be able to support their team in the Netherlands. Banned from traveling for a few European matches, including those in Basel and Thessaloniki during the last two rounds of the Europa League Conference, they will be between 1,000 and 2,000 to push Dimitri Payet and his teammates to Rotterdam.
On the return, on May 5, the north bend of the Vélodrome stadium will however remain closed, a measure sanctioning the excesses observed during the reception of the Greeks from PAOK in the previous round. It had been considered for a time to open these 6,500 places to children licensed in OM’s partner clubs, but the project was abandoned for lack of sufficient security guarantees.