Olympique de Marseille will defend this Thursday (kick-off 9 p.m.) in Salonika the slim advantage (2-1) acquired during their quarter-final first leg of the Europa League Conference and W9 has decided to offer an exhibition in the clear , to the detriment of an Olympique Lyonnais – West Ham of the Europa League, that is to say a completely different sports outfit. In itself, the choice of the channel belonging to the M6 group is fascinating to question.
Sorte de Roland-Garros bis
This requires the installation of decorative elements. Faced for ten years with the difficulty of selling its second-tier competition, the Europa League, to TVs, dried up by a Champions League that siphons off the three or four best-ranked formations in the most competitive European championships, the European Football Union (UEFA) had a brilliant idea in 2020: to work from the bottom, that is to say, to rid this Europa League, at least in its last rounds, of most of the teams of the least European nations. bankable, which starts with his idea somewhere on the side of the Belgians, Greeks or Czechs on the scale of sporting value. Problem: UEFA must offer a European outlet to all affiliated countries.
Solution: the Europa League Conference, a notch lower, generous receptacle for the small people of the round ball. To which we add, just to dress up the business to try to sell it a little, the fifth in the French championship (Stade Rennes), the seventh in the English championship (Tottenham) or all the teams from the wealthy championships that have rinse in the Europa League, itself a receptacle for teams that got out of the Champions League before Christmas. Can you imagine a kind of Roland-Garros bis, bringing together players beyond the 130th place in the world in addition to the first-round losers? Football did.
Bargain a bit baroque
And W9 followed, at a time when Olympique Lyonnais is rubbing shoulders with an eminent representative of the best championship in the world since the Hammers are sixth in the Premier League. Because OM, of course. In Marseille, the coach, Jorge Sampaoli, made no secret of the somewhat baroque windfall – given the history of the game and the weight of the European scene in this story – which presents itself to him: “Casing nothing, we are five games away from winning a European Cup”, he wondered before the first leg. And OM fans, as experienced as anyone in the continental scene, know only too well the sports scam where Mattéo Guendouzi, William Saliba and others are trudge midweek. And after ? It’s OM who put people in front of the post at the appointed time. The OM that exists in itself, without the help of the weight of the event.
Always OM who, regardless of Thursday’s result against Paok Salonika, will beat Olympique Lyonnais the same evening on the media front. Another way of seeing the game: not exploring the peaks that the very high level never ceases to clear (the Champions League and Karim Benzema are there for that) but finding a figure both familiar and carried away that we appreciate for what it is, on a walk in countries – the Aegean Sea, Agdam in Azerbaijan, Basel in the north of Switzerland – evoking alternative routes and a quite relative sporting threat. Basically, why deprive yourself of it?