After a very hectic week following the elimination in the Champions League, OM travels this Saturday to Jean-Bouin to face the PFC. Under pressure.
“Tomorrow I will be on the bench”. After 24 hours of uncertainty and contradictory information, Roberto De Zerbi assured that he would lead OM on Saturday against Paris FC, even if Wednesday’s defeat in Bruges and the elimination in the Champions League unsurprisingly left their mark. The day after the sinking of Bruges (3-0 defeat), Thursday was a hectic day around OM, who went to go green in the Paris region, between Rambouillet and the Clairefontaine training center.
This brief stay had been planned for a long time but it took a special turn when several media announced that De Zerbi had not led the scheduled training on the Michel Platini pitch. Other publications then assured that the Italian technician was leaving or that the club’s management was considering parting ways with him.
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“I didn’t lead yesterday’s training because I had analyzed Paris FC a lot, I hadn’t slept much and I wasn’t feeling very well. Everything else is things written and told. But I’m still here, I’m in front of you. This is the truth”he responded Friday during a press videoconference. “We lost an important match, in a bad way and we are eliminated from the Champions League. It’s a painful match. We spoke last night with Pablo Longoria and Medhi Benatia to look for the best solutions.he added.
“Another five or six years”
“As for the rest, there is nothing to confirm. I was the coach of OM and I am the coach of OM (…) Today I prepared the team and tomorrow I will be on the bench”De Zerbi further assured, adding that he “strength for another five or six years” at his post. It’s still difficult to plan that far ahead, especially at OM and especially before a formidable sequence: Paris FC on Saturday, reception of Rennes on Tuesday in the Coupe de France and another trip to the capital to face Paris SG in ten days.
“We need two victories and we will see things from a different angle”however, estimated the Marseille coach about the first two of these three meetings. In the meantime, it is clear that the defeat and the incredible elimination on Wednesday caused a new earthquake, the exact intensity of which remains to be measured.
Marseille had already experienced a first crisis in August with the departure of Adrien Rabiot, who appears to be the original sin of this poorly handled season. Going through a second one in January is a lot, even by OM standards.
“I don’t know…”
We almost forget that in the championship, Marseille remains on a very convincing success last Saturday against Lens, then leader (3-1), which left De Zerbi’s team well placed in the race for the Champions League, the only objective publicly displayed. On Wednesday in Bruges, football director Medhi Benatia, more angry with the players than with the coach, recalled the importance of the Coupe de France for OM, but also the difficulty of planning ahead in the face of the irregularity of his team.
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“The truth is that you are going to show up against Rennes and you don’t know which OM team you are going to find. Me, I don’t know. If it’s the one in Bruges, we’ll take five. On the other hand, if it’s Lens, we are capable of winning and behind us we don’t even look at the draw because we are better than the one that arrives. But I don’t know. The truth, I don’t know”he explained, disillusioned. And against Paris FC on Saturday, which OM will we see? We don’t know…
