While the European epic, which saved OM’s season for a long time, is now over, the Marseillais must pull themselves together to save the furniture in the championship.
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In a melting Gewiss Stadium, while Atalanta Bergamo has just qualified for its first European final by sweeping OM, they continue to sing in their corner. They are the 700 Marseille supporters who, unlike their players, were at the level of a European semi-final in Bergamo, even if the work on the enclosure limited their contingent. Despite the slap, they still sang on Thursday, May 9, as their players returned to the locker room with their heads down.
However, the Marseillais will have to quickly raise these heads, if they do not want to see the songs of their public quickly transform into whistles. Because if the Marseille epic in the Europa League has masked the fiasco of the Olympian season in recent weeks, this will no longer be the case from now on. Beaten on the verge of a fourth C3 final, OM only have Ligue 1 left to save their season. Or at least what can be for a team that was aiming for qualification in the Champions League and nothing else.
Europe or nothing
These Marseille ambitions seemed far away on Thursday, in the night in Bergamo, after Marseille’s apathetic performance in the semi-finals return. “It’s a big disappointment. A misunderstanding too, because a week apart, we are capable of showing two faces. We had no aggressiveness. I thought that, for a half of the European Cup, We were going to live up to the event, and we weren’t.”conceded Jean-Louis Gasset after the meeting, at the microphone of Canal +.
Dejected, with a black look and drawn features, the Olympique de Marseille coach – for once – presented himself to the press without his crooked smile. But the experience of the septuagenarian with the cap allowed him to quickly set a new course, after this rout in Lombardy: “We will not forget this journey. We had some magnificent evenings at the Vélodrome, but now OM must finish in Europe for next season.”
Then, as captain, Jean-Louis Gasset decreed general mobilization: “There are three games left, we have to get back to work quickly, put our heads back in the right place. While knowing that outside, we must do more to live up to the event. We need the sacred union of everyone for Marseille to be European.” Because the Marseille technician knows it only too well: the danger, after such a disappointment, is to miss the landing.
A destiny partly in our hands
However, OM must quickly get back on their feet. From Sunday, Lorient will be in Marseille for the last day of Ligue 1 at the Vélodrome of the season, before two accessible trips to Reims and Le Havre. Three matches which can bring nine points to OM, which would offer – at least – seventh place in Ligue 1 to the Phocéens, which will qualify for the Europa Conference League in the event of PSG’s victory in the Coupe de France against Lyon.
This is the part that OM has mastered, knowing that direct competitors will face each other between now and the end of the championship (notably Rennes and Lens), which could help the Phocaeans to make a jump in the ranking to go, why not, qualify for the Europa League. But before looking at what others are doing, OM will already have to cure their ailments outside.
The same evils that shattered OM’s European dream in Bergamo, a week after looking Atalanta straight in the eye. “It’s the story of this season, at the Vélodrome we are tigers, and outside we are cats”regretted Jean-Louis Gasset at the Gewiss Stadium. Lucid, the firefighter on duty knows that he left his mark with this epic event, even if it was aborted.
But he also knows that before completing his commando mission in the Old Port, he must qualify OM in Europe. Otherwise, next season would be the first without continental competition since 2019-2020 for OM. An anomaly that has only happened five times in twenty years. Suffice to say that in Marseille, no one dares to consider this scenario. Even less at the end of an epic so rich in emotions, despite the final frustration.