Things have turned sour at Stade Velodrome, with open warfare between the fans and the board - and there were some remarkable scenes during Friday's match with Rennes
Even after more than 20 years, Arsenal manager Arsene Wenger holds no love for Olympique de Marseille.
During his tenure as Monaco boss, which ended in 1994, the side from along the coast were his greatest rivals. That erstwhile owner Bernard Tapie operated in a manner that scarcely appealed to Wenger’s inherent sense of fair play only increased his animosity towards the Stade Velodrome club.
Yet Wenger may look to France’s south and feel some sympathy for current head coach Michel. While the long-standing Gunners boss comes under pressure to vacate his post in the wake of a disappointing season, it is positively gentle compared to the Spaniard’s experience at OM.
The powerhouse of French football in the late 1980s and early 1990s, Marseille have been seriously wounded by the recent domination of great rivals Paris Saint-Germain. Worse, the Provence club’s failure to get their own house in order has sent their fans into a remarkable open revolt that is gathering pace.
The football club is the lifeblood of the city; the people’s passion for the game is perhaps only matched in France in Saint-Etienne. For the team to be floundering so abysmally is a blow to the pride of Marseille’s citizens.
During Friday’s encounter with Rennes at Stade Velodrome, things reached a fresh nadir for a side that has not tasted victory at home in a Ligue 1 match since September – an insulting record for the fans.
Even before a ball was kicked, the atmosphere was inflammatory, despite a remarkable absence of patrons in the ground. Fans stayed away in their droves, with one of the most atmospheric cauldrons in Europe reduced to a sea of empty white seasons broken by pockets of disgust habituated by angry locals.
As the teams walked out for the traditional pre-match handshakes, rather than muted applause or even silence, the Marseille players were booed and jeered loudly.
With barely more than quarter of an hour played, they had fallen 3-0 behind, leading riot police to intercept furious supporters, for whom the shambolic running of the club had become too much. Banners were unfurled at either end of the ground, protesting against the lacklustre leadership of owner Margarita Louis-Dreyfus and president Vincent Labrune, who failed to tie down either key players or coach Marcelo Bielsa, for whom there remains a great fondness for at OM, last summer.
“MLD you have destroyed our dreams, VLB you have sold our passion, you are killing the club,” read one particularly potent banner.
Others were hung purposefully upside down to represent the all-too meek surrender of the team in recent weeks.
In the aftermath, Michel pledged to carry on, having been given a vote of confidence earlier in the week. But fans see the Spanish coach only as a symptom of greater problems at OM, and until these are remedied, the protests will continue. It will likely take the sale of the club to solve these issues, but that is something long discussed with little
Marseille, a once great institution, again finds itself in a state of crisis, one of the type that Wenger will be glad he will never have to cope with.
- Goal