At the Vélodrome stadium,
From an Olympique de Marseille “at the bottom of the hole” and a three-way defense unimaginable for coach Gennaro Gattuso a week ago, to a large victory 3 goals to 0 against the rival Lyon in a 3-5-2 Wednesday at the Vélodrome stadium, for this late match of the 10th day of Ligue 1. As Jordan Veretout recalled, “football moves very quickly”, the Marseillais are very well placed to know this. Nobody saw them winning this series of three home games against Ajax (4-3), Rennes (2-0), and even less Lyon (3-0), even last. But OM did it.
This time thanks to a new system aligned by Gattuso, which even he himself kept brushing aside during different press conferences. But the Italian coach first “analyzed Lyon well”, and then had to deal with a long list of absentees, including the very recent injury to Kondogbia for whom the duration of the unavailability is unknown. So he surprised everyone
“I said maybe I should put my ego aside,” Gattuso smiled. When we started working on this, they weren’t 100% convinced. But they were good, they believed in it and we had the match we hoped for. »
“It’s not just the system that allowed us to win”
This two-piston system really hurt the Lyonnais. As well as Lodi on his left side, author of an interception to launch Aubameyang in depth, who with all his intelligence preferred to shift Vitinha rather than shoot (21st). Than Murillo, on the right, to come and catapult the ball and poor Anthony Lopes into the back of the net after a superb tumble from Aubameyang, again, from the left (25th).
But beyond this 3-5-2 which will have highlighted almost all the players, it is the desire to play and move forward which has finally impressed on the OM side. “It’s not just the system that allowed us to win tonight, it helped us, that’s for sure. But ultimately it is also thanks to the will of the players who were very reactive, their ability to win duels, to fight, to run with and without the ball and to play under pressure. I must congratulate them for their commitment this evening,” Gennaro Gattuso said to Caesar.
“We ate our black bread”
A victory by three goals against the Lyonnais, a first in almost 30 years thanks to “the state of mind”, for Jordan Veretout who shares the same analysis as his coach, but who does not want to “get fired up no more”: “You know that football goes very quickly. A week ago we were at rock bottom, a week later everyone will start to burn out. You have to stay with your feet on the ground. »
Gennaro does not consider his team at all “healed” despite this series of three home victories. “It allows us to breathe, but we haven’t done anything yet. We have eaten our black bread, but we must continue to work. I told my team that we must not forget what we went through,” recalled the Italian coach.
The future still looks much easier even if from now on it will be necessary to confirm from the outside where OM “has a series of negative results, we need a trigger”, insisted Gattuso before going to Lorient on Sunday ( 8:45 p.m.). And above all to play for first place in Group B of the Europa League in Brighton next Thursday.