Olympique de Marseille face Benfica in the Europa League quarter-final first leg on Thursday. Marseille lost 3-1 to Lille in the Ligue 1 championship on Friday.
The defeat leaves Marseille in 8th place and 10 points from the Champions League zone. The Europa League offered OM its only satisfactions of the season and the Lisbon club, shaken by Toulouse during the play-offs in February, is not going through a particularly prosperous period either. OM have always played in Europe over the last four seasons, the situation is therefore very worrying and the end of the year could punish a club which has navigated from crisis to crisis this year and left all its coaches without solution. The prospect of a final still seems very distant, if only because if successful, the level would still have to be raised one or more notches against Atalanta Bergamo or Liverpool in the half. The task will not be easy. Since a laborious success against Nantes, OM have in fact suffered four consecutive defeats with 10 goals conceded and only two scored.