At OM, supporters slingshot and canceled match – Release

Olympique de Marseille will not play against Rennes this Saturday evening because of an attempted (sporting) coup. At least 300 supporters showed up at the Commanderie, the club’s training center, of which a dozen managed to force the doors. They protest, among other grievances, against the management of Jacques-Henri Eyraud, president of the club for about five years, and demand his resignation as in every crisis – the team no longer wins, no longer frames, no longer shoots.

Banners were hung all over town this weekend. The main slogan, beyond the names of birds, is (sportingly) patriotic: “Olympique de Marseille aux Marseillais”. Jacques-Henri Eyraud, known as JHE, is related to Paris and Franck Mc Court, the main shareholder, to the United States too, far away to understand anything.

Assessment of the day: burnt trees, images of secession on social networks, more than twenty arrests, a traumatized workforce and a player – Alvaro Gonzalez – hit by a projectile, report the correspondents present in the area. Tonight’s game is postponed. The management, which assesses the damage at several hundred thousand euros, issued a press release on Saturday evening with verbatims. As of Sunday morning, eighteen people were still in police custody.

“A year zero”

Steve Mandanda, goalkeeper and captain: “We are football players and a sports crisis can in no way justify such a surge of violence. The time has come for appeasement. ” Alvaro Gonzalez, victim of the day: “I came to Olympique de Marseille for its history and the passion that surrounds it. This city is wonderful, we all love this club, but what we experienced today must never happen again. ” JHE, the target president: “300 employees are this evening in a state of shock to have lived live or to have discovered the images of an unspeakable attack.”

The day before, André Villas-Boas, the coach, had announced his departure at the end of the season. And evoked “One year to zero” to come for the team, in this case the day after a purge, when a project starts again for the umpteenth time with a blank sheet of paper. Reason for fear: the main shareholder invests little more, which condemns Marseille to permanent resourcefulness. OM is an oxymoron. He is a big budget (more than 100 million euros this season) close to his pennies, an aristocrat unable to maintain his castle.

Last week, the Portuguese coach spoke of the tensions between Dimitri Payet and Florian Thauvin, two of OM’s most important and best paid players. Both had the right to their banner adorned with insults. The first is accused of being an intriguer overplaying his love of the club, the second of not loving it at all by refusing a contract extension.

Fantasy box

Worthy of a Netflix season: chronicles of changing room whims in the newspapers, players for sale at all costs, very discreet leaders, rumors of redemption animating social networks every two months. Bernard Tapie, the former president, appeared in video footage this week: he announced the upcoming change and opened the box of fantasies for the umpteenth time.

Ultimately, we come back to the basics: the results. This winter, OM plummeted in the standings. Potentially in the race for the podium in December, he watches it with a misty spyglass at the end of January. Thirteen points separate it from 3^e, Lille after a series of poor results against so-called easy prey (Reims, Dijon, Nîmes, Lens). OM also missed out on great lengths in the European Cup this season. 5 defeats and 1 victory in the Champions League, coupled with an execrable level of play. Technically, OM’s next home game is scheduled for February 7. Against Paris Saint-Germain, his favorite rival.