IF the present-day history of the rivalry between Paris Saint-Germain and Marseille is a tale of haves versus have-nots, the events of the past six months have only served to further entrench that distinction.
Under Rudi Garcia, Marseille briefly looked like they were closing the gap – reaching the Europa League final in 2018 and coming within a whisker of Champions League qualification via the league – but last season represented a major backwards step. Failure to qualify for any form of European competition obliged Marseille to cut the wage bill in order to balance the books and this summer the club had to sell players in order to buy.
Mario Balotelli’s lucrative six-month contract was not extended, Adil Rami was sacked after taking part in a television game show when he was supposed to be injured and the club’s fans said reluctant goodbyes to midfield stalwarts Luiz Gustavo (Fenerbahçe) and Lucas Ocampos (Sevilla).
OM spent only €27 million on incoming signings, with striker Darío Benedetto coming in from Boca Juniors and midfielder Valentin Rongier joining from Nantes, while Spanish centre-back Álvaro González arrived on a season-long loan from Villarreal with an automatic €4 million option to buy.
André Vilas-Boas’ Marseille side beat Strasbourg 2-0 in Ligue 1.
They currently sit in 4th place.
Just 1 defeat in 9 for Marseille but their first win in 5. AVB has built a very hard to beat side but the next step is turning draws into wins, this win is a good start!
— Próxima Jornada (@ProximaJornada1) October 21, 2019
“We don’t have any money,” new Marseille coach André Villas-Boas admitted in August. “It’s a pity, but it’s the truth.”
Concerns about Financial Fair Play also hung over Paris Saint-Germain during the summer transfer window, but that did not prevent them from spending around €100 million to sign Keylor Navas, Abdou Diallo, Idrissa Gueye, Pablo Sarabia and loanee Mauro Icardi. What Marseille would have given for some belt-tightening like that.
A summer replacement for Garcia, who was dismissed after a disappointing fifth-place finish last season, Villas-Boas is attempting to turn Marseille into more of a possession team, introducing a new 4-3-3 formation, an emphasis on patient ball circulation and more ball-focused exercises in training. His methods have marked a change from Garcia’s more reactive approach and they have been warmly welcomed by his players.
“It’s a different philosophy,” said winger-cum-full-back Bouna Sarr. “We work a huge amount with the ball and it’s what we, as players, like. Even the notionally physical exercises are done with the ball. It’s a change for us, but we appreciate it.”
Befitting a team shorn of key players and adapting to a new manager with new ideas, OM’s form to date has been mixed. They lost 2-0 at home to Reims on the opening weekend before drawing 0-0 at Nantes (Benedetto crowning his full debut with a missed penalty), then won three games in a row, then went four games without victory.
Fortunately, for Marseille, the difficulties being experienced by their supposed main rivals for a top-three finish – namely Lyon, Monaco and Lille – have allowed them to keep in touch with the teams at the top of the table in spite of their patchy form. Last weekend’s 2-0 win over Strasbourg at a rain-lashed Stade Vélodrome allowed them to climb to fourth place in the Ligue 1 standings and they trail second-place Nantes by only three points.
" @Ligue1_ENG is different from Argentina: it's much faster, more intense … I am happy to have scored a few goals already." pic.twitter.com/kSSDWVoCFx
— Olympique Marseille (@OM_English) October 19, 2019
Marseille remain without last season’s top scorer Florian Thauvin, who is not expected back until January after undergoing ankle surgery, but they will welcome back Dimitri Payet and Morgan Sanson from suspension for the trip to Paris and could also be boosted by the return of González, who has missed four games with a fractured fibula.
González returned to full training on Thursday and is rated at 50-50 for the game at Parc des Princes. Marseille are yet to lose in Ligue 1 this season when he and 19-year-old centre-back partner Boubacar Kamara have been aligned at kick-off, winning three games and drawing two.
Payet has also been out for four matches, having been hit with a hefty suspension after he was shown a second yellow card for swearing at referee Amaury Delerue amid the dying embers of Marseille’s 1-1 draw at home to Montpellier in September. Villas-Boas’s switch to a 4-3-3 system has obliged Payet to adopt a left-wing role that does not suit him down to the ground, but his creativity and set-piece delivery are likely to be pivotal if OM are to take anything from their trip to the capital.
Two years ago, Marseille came within touching distance of victory over PSG at the Vélodrome, only for a stoppage-time free-kick by Edinson Cavani to rescue a 2-2 draw for the visitors. It is now close to eight years since Marseille last beat Paris and over nine and a half years since they last came away from Parc des Princes with all three points.
Beyond the trip to Paris, Marseille face a potentially pivotal run of fixtures, with a Coupe de la Ligue tie at Monaco followed by back-to-back home games against top-three rivals Lille and Lyon, whose recent appointment of Garcia as head coach has added even more spice to what was already one of the most hotly contested fixtures in the French game.
It was perhaps because he was mindful of those games that Villas-Boas offered such a dismissive assessment of his side’s chances of victory against PSG when he spoke to the media after the win over Strasbourg, describing it as “not a match that counts too much for me”. His players, however, offered a more bullish discourse, with Rongier declaring that despite the gulf in resources between the two clubs, PSG were “not impregnable”.
“They’re players who everyone knows, who everyone picks on FIFA,” said Kamara. “We have to go and play and not think too much about who’s in front of us. It’s a Clásico, it’s a match that matters for all the Marseille supporters and for ourselves, so it’s up to us to show our strengths, to go up there and not shit ourselves, so to speak.”
Have-nots they may be, but one thing Marseille do not lack is belief.
