Olympique de Marseille worried after their loss against Panathinaikos (1-0)

First official game of the season, first defeat and great concern. In immense difficulty in all areas, Olympique de Marseille (OM) under new coach Marcelino was beaten 1-0 on Wednesday August 9 in Athens by Panathinaikos at 3^e preliminary round first leg of the Champions League and is already in a very perilous position before the return match.

“The Champions League is very important to us, we all have to work to be there every year”, Marseille President Pablo Longoria repeated on Monday. But the 3^e place won at the end of last season forced his team to make their way to the pools via two preliminary rounds which are still terribly perilous and Wednesday’s defeat already puts OM with their backs to the wall, forced to react strongly in six days at home.

“We have to be ready”had repeated, Tuesday in front of the press, the new Marseille coach Marcelino; “Of course we are ready”, had for his part launched the evening captain Samuel Gigot. But that wasn’t quite true, and it showed.

Still digesting the transition between the furious football of Igor Tudor and that much more calm of Marcelino, the Marseillais seemed lost on Wednesday in Athens, without tactical certainties and physically struggling.

There was however a real curiosity to see this team again redone from floor to ceiling this summer, to discover these new faces, with five rookies lined up from the start, and this new style.

But the start of the Marcelino era was therefore very worrying and we saw in Athens that the Asturian had had too little time to settle his ideas. Result, in an atmosphere very far from being as frightening as announced in the small Apostolos Nikolaïdis stadium, beyond the decade, OM with Marcelino sauce seemed very far from the mark.

Kondogbia expelled, players out of form

In a 4-4-2 almost too clear, with lines drawn as a rule, the Marseillais did not build the slightest action during the first 20 minutes, spent running behind the ball, which the Greeks did not then do much.

At the 22ᵉ minute, Pierre-Emerick Aubameyang placed a header well above the bar then, at the 45ᵉ minute, Azzedine Ounahi, in great difficulty on the left throughout the game, finally found the frame for a curled shot law.

In the meantime, Geoffrey Kondogbia had been warned in the 30th second by an easy card referee and several players had already seemed very struggling, such as the rookies Iliman Ndiaye or Ismaïla Sarr.

The second period was even worse, with only one positive action in the 50^e minute, with two dangerous shots in quick succession from Ounahi then Jonathan Clauss.

But above all, OM suffered enormously, with in particular a very, very low time around the hour mark, which woke up the Greek public and resulted in the expulsion of Kondogbia (65^e) for a second yellow this time indisputable. Then, the Marseillais did nothing more than defend, including the offensive entrants Amine Harit and François-Régis Mughe, hoping that the relative offensive quality of the “Pana” would save them.

But the players in the green jersey succeeded in a constructed action, with a nice delivery from Ioannidis for the Brazilian Bernard, who deceived Pau Lopez (1-0, 83^e).

In Athens, OM dreamed of launching a European marathon that would take them at least to the group stage, or even more, after coming close to qualifying for the round of 16 last season. His sporting ambitions depend on it and his economic health as well. But this will require doing much better on Tuesday at the Stade-Vélodrome.