Calm returns to Marseille. While Gennaro Gattuso’s Olympians welcome AEK Athens this Thursday evening (6:45 p.m.) in the Europa League, the club’s leaders proposed meetings with groups of supporters to renew dialogue, a month after the stormy meeting at the Commanderie which led to the departures of Marcelino and Javier Ribalta. According to information from RMC Sport, Marseille president Pablo Longoria and his general director, Stéphane Tessier, spoke with Rachid Zeroual, the leader of the South Winners, in a hotel near the Old Port two weeks ago. Very influential at the Vélodrome stadium, Zeroual participated in the parade at the OM training center, being one of the men at the center of the protest. His exchange with Longoria, particularly regarding their mutual accusations, would have made it possible to put things straight and start again on better foundations.
The newspaper l’Equipe adds, for its part, that the club’s management met with all the supporters’ associations (except the MTP who would have postponed the meeting), each in turn for around thirty minutes in the center of Marseille. Here too, a chance to dialogue in a more serene climate and to discuss, in a smaller group, the current situation in Marseille.
Among the reproaches made to Longoria during these exchanges – which did not only serve to rehash the past crisis – the group leaders would not have hidden their surprise at the resignation of Marcelino, put on their backs after the famous meeting, before returning to the content of the remarks exchanged on September 18 at the Commanderie. In an interview with La Provence, Longoria, very moved, denounced intimidation and death threats made by members of the Vélodrome bends. A version contradicted by Zeroual in the press and brushed aside by certain supporters in front of the president in recent days, without adding fuel to the fire. Still in difficulty in Ligue 1, OM will play part of their European future this Thursday against AEK Athens. In an atmosphere lightened within the locker room by Gattuso but also behind the scenes by the initiative of Longoria, determined to restore calm after the big storm.