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Marseille fans in August 2020 after FC Bayern won the Champions League final against OM's arch-rival Paris
Photo:
CHRISTOPHE SIMON / AFP
"I don't want anything from OM, I don't want any money, I just want to get away": The last sentences of André Villas-Boas as coach of Olympique Marseille are classics.
Seldom has a coach left his job as disillusioned as the Portuguese on Tuesday.
Seldom has anyone met the club's attitude to life so well.
At least that of those who have the privilege and the pain of working in it.
At some point, OM creates everyone, that's part of folklore.
The port city of Marseille is different from most of the rest of France: more southern, more colorful, louder, dirtier, more dangerous.
And she has a football club in her own image: anarchic and flamboyant, a historical scandalous noodle.
Who succeeds in winning the Champions League in the same week and postponing a league game that later led to relegation to the second division?
Of course only Olympique.
That was in May 1993.
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A banner in Marseille calling for the president to be removed: Jacque-Henri Eyraud
Photo: Daniel Cole / dpa
In the winter of 2021, the world of football is rubbing its eyes again in amazement.
On Saturday she got to see the ugliest side of the "folie", the madness.
Several hundred Ultras stormed the club's premises before the planned league game against Rennes.
They set fire to trees, marauded, stole.
Villas-Boas and defender Álvaro González tried to appease, they were attacked and relieved of valuables.
The rest of them hid in their rooms, full of fear.
The American club owner Frank McCourt even compared the mob with the Trumpists at the Capitol: "What happened in Washington and what happened in Marseille follows a similar logic."
"As if the chefs were pelted with cutlery in a restaurant"
Football in Marseille is something for adventurers and adrenaline junkies.
The number of ultras is estimated at around 27,000, which the Stade Vélodrome with its oval grandstands - the stadium is not just a normal stadium - usually turn into a sea of lights.
Football in Marseille is at the limit.
On the one hand for the opponents: "As if the chefs were pelted with cutlery in a restaurant," said Neymar, the star of the hated rival Paris St. Germain, once describing the hail of projectiles from the stands.
On the other hand, but also for the OM professionals themselves: Patrice Evra struck back in 2017 when warming up before an away game in Guimarães after his own fans threatened him.
He was then released, presumably under pressure from the Ultras.
And finally there is the city and its crime: Defender Hilton, for example, a member of the last championship team in 2010, was robbed in his house and beaten with a gun while his wife and children were held hostage.
He was then transferred to Montpellier.
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OM fans at the game against Lyon 2019: Football in Marseille is at the limit
Photo: SYLVAIN THOMAS / AFP
But she couldn't remember anything like on Saturday in Marseille either.
Yes, something was brewing after the recent crash into the middle of the table, and they had been mobbing outside the stadium during a previous home defeat against bottom of the table Nîmes.
"If people could have got in, you wouldn't have come home by three in the morning," President Jacques-Henri Eyraud is said to have called to the professionals internally afterwards.
The unloved functionary felt the pressure;
He, but also McCourt or in shape stars like Florian Thauvin and Dimitri Payet, were hostile graffiti in the city last week.
They were harbingers of violence.
The President as the first enemy
Villas-Boas, the polyglot ex-coaching sensation of FC Porto, was reminded of the hooligan attack on the Sporting Lisbon Academy three years ago, but named another main reason for his escape.
Since the departure of sports director Andoni Zubizarreta, he has been at odds with OM management.
Already in the summer, allegedly only the players kept him from resigning.
Recently he fled himself more and more often in sarcasm: "To be shit in the Champions League, you have to at least qualify for the Champions League," he recalled after disastrous European Cup appearances: "We made it and we are shit."
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OM President Jacques-Henri Eyraud
Photo: FRANCK FIFE / AFP
The barrel overflowed with the news that OM had loaned midfielder Olivier Ntcham to replace Morgan Sanson, who had been sold out of financial difficulties: "This is a player I turned down," said Villas-Boas.
The fans see President Eyraud as the first enemy.
You see in the alumni of elite universities and former Disney executives a cool technocrat for whom football is just numbers.
"Jacques-Henri Eyraud has to understand that he is in the wrong place," said the legendary, now cancer-stricken old patron of the club, Bernard Tapie, in a hoarse voice.
"These people are about to destroy an image that is more than 100 years old." When the interviewer from "France Info" reminded that Eyraud liked to make clearing up OM's dirty tradition his core concern, Tapie - owner in 1993 - broke angry the conversation.
France's sports newspaper "L'Équipe" hit the mood pretty well the next day.
The headline for the photo of the resigning Villas-Boas was: "Save yourself if you can."
However, the headline can also be extended to the state of the entire Ligue 1. It is true that the three-way battle between Lille, Lyon and subscription champions Paris is really exciting at the moment.
But at the same time, a threatening financial crisis in French football is escalating.
Until tonight, a crisis summit should clarify the tricky situation with the TV rights after an alleged dream contract with the Spanish exploiter Mediapro had turned into a nightmare.
In December, the provider gave back the rights because he could not pay them.
A new tender did not bring a satisfactory result until Monday.
At the moment it is not clear whether and how the rest of the current season can still be brought to the screens.
The clubs are already badly hit by Corona and the termination of the previous season and have already had to pump the state up with a 224 million euro loan.
Violence problem even in the age of ghost games
In addition, as the incidents in Marseille showed, French football does not get rid of its problem of violence even when stadiums are empty.
As particularly fiery as the OM fans are, they are not alone with some behavior.
In Saint-Étienne, too, fans entered the training grounds at the weekend and surrounded the professionals.
After all, they left it at the chanting of battle cries.
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Resigned trainer André Villas-Boas: "we sucks"
Photo: JEAN-PAUL PELISSIER / REUTERS
Far up in the north, only determined security prevented the Ultras of Lille from triggering a mass panic while hunting down their own players.
The scenes a year earlier in Corsica, where Bastia's home fans beat up Lyon's guest players, are unforgettable anyway.
For OM, it's in the evening after Lens (9 p.m.) and about at least stopping the sporty fall.
It is still unclear which coach will be allowed to deal with the environment in the future.
Villas-Boas also leaves this one among numerous bon mots: “If Marseille had money, you would get Guardiola and his possession football.
Unfortunately, it's only enough for André Villas-Boas and his tactics. «Not even for that anymore.
Icon: The mirror