It’s not quite the Champions League yet, but Marseille has to go through it if it wants to see the chickens: largely renewed this summer, new coach Marcelino’s OM start their European season on Wednesday with a third round preliminary to go to Greece, against Panathinaikos.
Trips to Athens are always promises of a burning atmosphere, but this time the atmosphere is terribly weighed down by the death of an AEK fan, who was stabbed on Monday during clashes with supporters of Croatian club Dinamo Zagreb in the day before the match scheduled between the two teams and finally postponed. For Wednesday’s match against “Pana”, the movement of Marseille supporters, linked by an old friendship to those of AEK, has been banned by UEFA and only players should therefore discover the atmosphere of the small stadium. Apostolos Nikolaidis.
It is there, in the city center of the Greek capital, that Marseille will launch its European adventure, with the hope of getting out of the preliminary pitfalls of August to reach the group stage of the C1, the one that corresponds their sporting ambitions and their financial needs. “The Champions League is very important to us, we all have to work to be there every year,” Marseille president Pablo Longoria repeated on Monday. “It’s also true that playing these play-offs is what we deserved compared to our last season,” added the Spanish leader.
Not dishonorable, the third place won in June by the team then managed by Igor Tudor has indeed placed two additional obstacles on the road to OM, Panathinaikos in the 3rd preliminary round, then the Portuguese of Braga or the Serbs of Backa Topola in dam, always in August. In the end, the Marseillais find themselves with a terrifying schedule for this back-to-school month, with potentially eight games between Wednesday and September 1, if they eliminate Panathinaikos.
Full-bodied, the program is made even more difficult by the traditional big summer cleaning orchestrated on the transfer window by the Marseille management. On Wednesday, OM could thus start with at least five players who were not there six weeks ago: Brazilian Renan Lodi in defense, midfielder Geoffrey Kondogbia and attackers Iliman Ndiaye, Pierre-Emerick Aubameyang and Ismaïla Sarr.
“It takes time to get to know each other, but there was the preparation, the friendly matches… We are pros, it’s up to us to adapt quickly. Of course we are ready,” assured central defender Samuel Gigot on Tuesday.
“We are a team under construction and this is not the best time. If I could choose, I wouldn’t play this match right away (smile). But we have known from the start that it will be like this, ”said Marcelino at a press conference. “We tried to speed up the adaptation process. That of the staff to the players and that of the players to the staff. I am very satisfied with what we showed last week against Bayer Leverkusen (2-1 defeat, editor’s note), which is a team that is already built. It makes me optimistic for tomorrow, ”explained the Spanish technician, who had little time to get his ideas across and install his system, between 4-4-2 and 4-2-3-1.
Faced with the vice-champions of Greece, who have not played in the Champions League since the 2010-2011 season, Marcelino and his men are still favorites. And even if it would send them to the group stage of the Europa League, like a setback in the next round in the play-offs, elimination from this preliminary round would be seen as a considerable failure for OM.
