At the Vélodrome stadium,
How courageous these few hundred supporters of Olympique de Marseille are to have remained to whistle their players after their team’s sad draw Friday evening against Strasbourg (1-1). In freezing cold and faced with the desolation of the level of play, most had already deserted the Vélodrome when the whistle blew, a few seconds after Strasbourg’s equalizer. But a handful remained to boo Gennaro Gattuso’s men, even on the Dodgers side, even though they were the only supporters allowed in the north turn. And it is well deserved.
As too often since the arrival of the Italian coach at the head of OM, the Marseillais completely foiled after scoring. Worse this time, it lasted almost the entire match since Gigot had the bad idea of opening the score with a header much too early (3rd). Gattuso’s manly embrace with his defender suggested something else, but OM stopped playing again.
“It’s not the first time this has happened.”
And it was at the moment when Mr. Bollengier extended our ordeal by six minutes of added time, that the incoming Sebas (92nd) made what everyone predicted come true. To leave the Marseillais completely groggy, before seeing them get scolded.
“Yeah it’s very frustrating. When we win 1-0 and concede a goal at home in the last minutes, we are furious. We know that in this type of match if you don’t put the second after it’s complicated. Despite that, we must not give up until the end, we must not concede this kind of goal, especially since it is not the first time that it has happened this season, it is repeated a bit,” complained Samuel Gigot, to the point of getting angry at a microphone that’s a little too close.
To see his face on bad days, and to hear his hoarse voice, this draw almost sounds like a defeat for Gennaro Gattuso who, after having castigated his team’s performance against Montpellier (1-1) before the break, this time took his share of responsibility:
“It’s my fault, we weren’t good enough. This is something that has happened before, I know it and it annoys me. It’s my responsibility, in the second half we defended too much and we paid for it in the 92nd minute. This is something that I have not yet managed to change, we need to make progress on this point.”
The CAN and the transfer window weigh
The Italian coach is not helped by the CAN and the absence of seven players from his squad who have gone to the selection, starting with that of Amine Harit. OM clearly lack creativity and the attack is cruelly felt. “It’s easy to say that players are missing but I’m not like that. It’s true that there are a lot of absentees, who could have given us something qualitatively, but I’m not hiding behind that,” Gattuso preferred to brush aside. The new injury to Geoffrey Kondogbia, already just to start the match after a blow received in training, could quickly make him change his mind as the Marseille squad is so depopulated.
And when it’s not the CAN, it’s the transfer window since the Marseille coach admitted to having left Renan Lodi on the bench to preserve him. “We didn’t want to take the risk that he would get injured or that he wouldn’t be 100%,” he explained, while confirming that discussions for the Brazilian to leave were underway.
Lots of frying on the line which OM would have liked to do without, like this new draw. “I hope we will learn quickly if we want to stay at the top because we are wasting points,” Gigot warned. OM will face Rennes in the Coupe de France next weekend before continuing with Monaco, two matches already decisive for the end of the season, while January will not yet be over.