“Much more than a supporter. It is with great sadness that we learned of the death of René Malleville,” OM wrote on its Twitter account, which faces Rennes at 5:00 p.m. on Sunday at home.
René Malleville was 73 years old. He announced several weeks ago on Twitter that he was suffering from cancer. “Think well that I am not at the best, I embrace you all”, he had again written Wednesday.
“A day of mourning a match day. René Malleville, one of OM’s most emblematic supporters, has just left us. He will have made us vibrate, laugh and cry. He will have been the voice of thousands of supporters. We already miss his voice. Ciao René “, wrote on Twitter the mayor of the city Benoît Payan.
“Supporter among the supporters, tireless defender of OM, he gave his time, his energy and his soul for our club. There will be sadness in the Stade Vélodrome this afternoon”, added Renaud Muselier. , President of the Provence-Alpes-Côte d’Azur Regional Council.
Thunderous
Even if he had become a true symbol of Marseille and OM supporters, Malleville, born in Aude, had only arrived in the city of Provence at the age of 10.
There he was a welder, then a bus driver at the Régie des Transports Marseillais (RTM), where he was a very committed trade unionist, before becoming a bar owner. He was also municipal councilor to Mayor Gaston Defferre, from 1977 to 1983.
A thunderous supporter of OM, shoulder-length hair, blue eyes and high verb, he was successively a member of the Yankees and then of the Dodgers, two of the club’s main groups of supporters.
For more than 15 years, he appeared in various media as a columnist, in particular on the Marseille site Le Phocéen, where his “Minute de René” was an expected meeting, between analysis of the life of the OM, full outbursts banter, local accent and very personal vocabulary.
As soon as the announcement of his death, many tribute messages were published on social networks, from supporters and local journalists. Valentin Rongier, OM midfielder, posted him a photo of Malleville accompanied by the message “RIP”.
