Now dropped in the league, OM will play their Europa League quarter-final first leg in Lisbon on Thursday against Benfica, a club which evokes some very bad memories, to keep its last objective alive and avoid a very painful end to the season .
In Ligue 1, the elastic ended up breaking. As their rivals were not advancing very quickly either, Marseille long hoped that their chaotic course would not prevent them from reaching the top 4 and the Champions League. But a new setback last Friday in Lille (3-1) established the obvious: the step is far too high for this OM.
” My feeling ? Anger. Despite an up-and-down season, we could still hope for something in these last six games. But we gave them the match, we only gave gifts, we missed goals… We were rubbish,” summed up Marseille coach Jean-Louis Gasset, caught up like Gennaro Gattuso before him by the weaknesses of a fragile and poorly designed workforce.
The Lille disaster therefore leaves Marseille in 8th place and 10 points from the Champions League zone, with 5th, 6th and 7th positions, those of the European folding seats, as the last objectives at its height.
The memory of Vata
While 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.
In these conditions, and while we still do not know whether Marseille supporters will be allowed to attend the match on Thursday at the Stade de la Luz, the duel with Benfica now serves as the last real reason for hope. Because the Europa League offered OM its only satisfactions of the season and because the Lisbon club, shaken by Toulouse during the play-offs in February, is not going through a particularly prosperous period either.
History, however, is not on OM’s side, with an elimination against Benfica in the round of 16 of the C3 in 2010 and, above all, the famous semi-final of the European Champion Clubs’ Cup in 1990, marked by the hand of Vata and a cruel elimination a few minutes before a European final.
Thirty-four years later, the prospect of a final still seems very distant, if only because if successful against Benfica, the level would still have to be raised one or more notches against Atalanta Bergamo or Liverpool in the half.
Mbemba hope in an ocean of wounded
But beyond a very improbable final victory which would open the door to the Champions League for the Marseillais, the two upcoming matches against the Portuguese should at least make it possible to avoid a final month of unpleasant competition, while the atmosphere already tense around the club could turn into frankly deleterious.
The task will not be easy. Since a laborious success against Nantes (2-0), OM have in fact suffered four consecutive defeats with 10 goals conceded and only two scored, one by Jonathan Clauss at the end of a very frightening match at Villarreal and the other, involuntarily, by Pierre-Emerick Aubameyang in Lille.
At the end of a return match that was more tense than it should have been, Marseille qualified against Villareal in the previous round. Pressinphoto/Icon Sport
Above all, repeated injuries to senior players continue to poison the lives of OM and Gasset. “Of the 18 who were there this evening, six did not qualify for the C3. My only hope is Chancel Mbemba who will perhaps be able to play in Lisbon,” regretted the Marseille coach on Friday. “I told the players. We were terrible, but it’s with this group that we will go to Lisbon,” he added.
“We must stop hiding behind the number of injured. We have a significant squad,” said midfielder Jordan Veretout, who promised a reaction. “Now we have to raise our level because it is too insufficient. If we play like that in the Europa League, we will get knocked out. »
