After the crisis and a blank season, good weather? Tossed from coach to coach and from squad to squad, Olympique de Marseille, Pablo Longoria’s version, is still searching for its balance. This instability and lack of results caused a serious crisis at OM in September 2023. A meeting between the groups of supporters, dissatisfied with the start of the season, and the management then turned sour, causing the withdrawal of the club’s leaders. The resignation of the Spanish president was even demanded.
Following this stormy interview, Marcelino, who had been a coach for just two months, left of his own accord, as did some of Longoria’s lieutenants, notably David Friio and Javier Ribalta. We don’t forget everything, but we start again – once again – from scratch. The club starts a new season on Saturday, August 17, against Brest (5 p.m.) with a new coach, Roberto De Zerbi, and a team largely reworked compared to last season.
Overconsumption of coaches
OM is a club that uses tacticians at an intense frequency, instability is almost a trademark. We did not have to wait for Pablo Longoria to arrive at its head, in February 2021, to establish this observation. It’s quite simple, in the 21st century, no Ligue 1 club has used as many as the Marseille club: 27 in all, counting the interims and not counting the various passages of those who returned several times like Albert Emon, José Anigo, or Franck Passi.
On the other hand, there has been a real acceleration since the start of the Spaniard’s mandate. Between February 2021 and August 2024, Pablo Longoria had nine coaches, from André Villas-Boas – chosen by his predecessor, Jacques-Henri Eyraud – to Roberto De Zerbi, via Marcelino, Gennaro Gattuso, and Jean-Louis Gasset. Of the eight coaches he appointed, the longevity record belongs to Jorge Sampaoli, who stayed for just over a year, from March 2021 to July 2022. It had taken more than ten years for previous managements to reach this number of coaches, an already high rate.
These changes are incessant, but not always to be blamed on the Marseille president: Sampaoli and Tudor left of their own accord. The first was not in phase with the transfer window, the second simply exhausted after a season in Marseille.
This instability results in the impossibility of finding a lasting playing identity. Marseille supporters were marked by the “organized disorder” advocated by Jorge Sampaoli, or on the contrary the iron discipline imposed by Igor Tudor. The Croatian had managed to find a 3-4-3 playing system that convinced the players and the Vélodrome while his replacement, Marcelino, wanted to play in 4-4-2. Enough to lose clarity and start from scratch every summer by asking the players to continually learn new tactical schemes.
The Spaniard has, however, had a nose for certain coaches: Olympique de Marseille climbed onto the podium twice in a row, under Sampaoli then Tudor, a first in twelve years and the Didier Deschamps era. The strategy reached its limits last season and swept away all the positives of previous years with this blank, or rather black, season. The Phocéens were only able to get 8th place in the championship, without European qualification.
This hadn’t happened to them since the 2015-2016 season. After Marcelo Bielsa’s surprise departure on the first day of the championship, the club had juggled between Michel and Franck Passi’s interims. Three different coaches had succeeded one another… Follow our gaze.
A workforce in constant motion
In the absence of finding a coach who will stay and around whom to build a stable squad, Pablo Longoria, the professional scout, is very active in each transfer window. The president of OM is, season after season, obliged to adapt his squad to his coach and to make regular adjustments.
According to figures from the specialist website Transfermarkt, since his arrival at the club in the summer of 2020 – he was initially sporting director – Pablo Longoria and his troops have made 164 transfers, including arrivals, departures and loans. With an average of 27 transfers per season. This summer, 28 movements (departures, arrivals, loans) have already been recorded. Much more than his competitors: 13 for PSG, eight for AS Monaco, 16 for Olympique Lyonnais… (to be seen if there is no transfer by then: notably Fofana from AS Monaco)
We have to go back to the 2015-2016 and 2016-2017 seasons to see signs of such frenzy. Olympique de Marseille had then let several executives go for free and above all needed to sell in order to rebalance its accounts and lower its payroll.
The few great moves made by the Spaniard (Alexis Sanchez, Pierre-Emerick Aubameyang, Matteo Guendouzi, William Saliba, Pau Lopez, Chancel Mbemba and Leonardo Balerdi) have too often been erased by major failures that have cost dearly: Vitinha, the biggest transfer in the club’s history (32 million euros), was sold this summer for 16 million euros, but also, to name just last season, Ismaila Sarr and Iliman Ndiaye…
These players are examples of Longoria’s change in strategy. When he arrived, the OM president made his transfers with bits of string. For over a year, he has been investing larger sums in the transfer market. Except that the players concerned have almost never met the expectations created by the price of their transfer.
This constant coming and going is often misunderstood by the club’s followers, especially when it comes to players who have performed well or executives, totally part of the club’s identity and who had won the favour of the Vélodrome (Under, Guendouzi, Payet).
The arrival of Roberto De Zerbi, who has signed for three seasons and who “works as [s’il allait] stay two years, four years, ten years“, according to his words at the press conference, seems to have calmed things down. Pablo Longoria was still very active in the transfer window this summer, with some attractive names: Elye Wahi, Pierre-Emile Hojbjerg, Valentin Carboni… “We want to write a new chapter. Especially when you want to start a three-year project, it’s normal that there are a lot of changes,” justified Pablo Longoria again, Monday August 12, at a press conference. This time, finally, the course is clear. But until when?