Days of Waddle now a distant memory for fallen giants Marseille
CHRIS WADDLE tells a good Marseille story. Dozens of them in fact. But when he arrived in the steamy south of France on July 17, 1989 to begin his first pre-season for ‘OM as the third-most expensive footballer on the planet, he was disconcerted to find nobody from the club there to meet him.
Nor were there any clamouring fans. He was reassured, however, to discover that the media were there — in force.
And via the slightly basic English of the Alpha-male reporter it transpired that they wanted to know what song he’d be singing in the Vélodrome stadium the following night.
“Wow! Diamond Lights really has made more of an impact than I could ever have dreamed”, he now admits to thinking.
Until it transpired that the throng of media thought he was Pink Floyd’s lead singer and were pretty uninterested when it transpired that not only was Waddle not Waters, he wasn’t David Gilmour either.
An underwhelming way to start what became three straight Ligue 1 wins.
Waddle returned with some mates for a weekend in Provence last year and found, by comparison, that he was utterly mobbed.
Welcomed with open arms by the club, he was so besieged by fans wanting a picture with him or an autograph that he didn’t see most of the second half of the match they attended.
Partly because Waddle became ‘Magic Chris’ while he was at the Vélodrome. Adored and revered. Partly because Olympique are a shambles right now. How they crave a powerful, elegant, winning, entertaining footballer of his quality these days.
Three straight titles? Everyone associated with this snarling, perpetually ambitious club knows that it’s more likely for France to ban wine and make Irn Bru obligatory with meals than that to happen any time soon.
Olympique Marseille as a name conjurs up mental i mages of trophies, scandal and some of the great names of modern European football.
Deschamps, Cantona, Makelélé, Amoros, Francescoli, Papin, Desailly, Weah, Sauzée, Abedi Pele, Tigana, Drogba, Ribéry.
So figure this. In the last 20 years they have been French champions just once.
They have not won the French Cup since 1989.
Were it not for three very recent League Cup trophies, they would have won just one major trophy in the last quarter of a century.
The club’s former President, Christophe Bouchet recently argued: ‘Historically, the team always started the season with real hopes of being champions but PSG have changed all that.
‘I’m genuinely astonished that nobody at the club has thought about making some changes to the Olympique Marseille DNA now that they are no longer the leaders of French football. Nobody there is asking the important questions: “Who are we?” “How do we move forward from here?”.
‘‘OM’ have always taken risks. The kind of risks that raise expectations and hopes.’
For some, the foolhardy I’d say, Marcelo Bielsa felt like that daring, typical OM spin of the dice. To say he’s a fraud would be unfair. But nor is ‘flawed’ a sufficiently voluptuous adjective to describe his enormous baggage. Zsa Zsa Gabor carried less.
His time at the Vélodrome was full of angst, anguish and anger.
He quit, in high-dudgeon, after losing the first game of the season.
Never having mastered French he functioned through a translator, Fabrice Olszewski.
Soon after the Argentinian left, Olszewski revealed that: ‘There were always problems. We did not have one week where we could honestly say: “Here, we worked well, everything went fine, there were no issues”.’
Olszewski also spilled the beans on how, when Bielsa was angry with him, a ‘hold my jacket’ moment erupted.
‘Bielsa said to me: “Come on then we are going to have a walk, and we will sort this out through a discussion”. We got to the top of a little hill and then he said to me: “Now we are going to sort this out by fighting each other... this is the only way to resolve things”.
‘I exploded with laughter and I left. He apologised afterwards and we sorted it out easily.
‘But I saw his faults. I told him: “I compare you to Vincent van Gogh. You are a football genius, but in terms of human relationships, are far too complicated”. And Bielsa found that comparison to be flattering!’
You might wonder how the Argentinian lasted as long as he did. Halfway through last season OM were top of the league. They then lost seven and drew four of their final 19 matches. Not only hopeless but expensive. Bielsa’s mob only scraped fourth place on goal difference. No Champions League revenue.
However, a mess like this is not the work of just one culprit. Whatever else the current President Vincent Lebrune thinks he is up to, he would make a jolly good ‘sleeper’.
A career in TV and communications allowed him to get close to owner Robert Louis-Dreyfus and work his way up the club structure.
When Dreyfus died Lebrune found his Russian widow, Margarita LouisDreyfus, relied on him still more.
During his reign Marseille have lost millions of Euros, finished sixth and fourth, missing out on the Champions League, needed nearly €50million injected by Madame Louis-Dreyfus from her personal fortune, and made a pig’s breakfast, mostly via Bielsa, of kick-starting the club’s fight back to greatness.
A fightback previewed by Lebrune himself when, in 2013, he declared: ‘Marseille is in the process of writing one of the most beautiful pages in its sporting history since winning the Champions League in 1993.’
Not noticeably Vinnie boy. His administration managed to let André Ayew, André-Pierre Gignac, Jeremy Merel and Rod Fanni all leave for free this summer.
Now the elegant, admirable Spaniard, Michel, is in charge. He’s already called his team’s defending ‘suicidal’. Feasibly, they could start tonight’s match against Bastia bottom of the table.
Back in 1989 Pink Floyd started their Vélodrome set with ‘Shine On You Crazy Diamond’.
It’s a good Olympique Marseille metaphor. But the shine has grown extremely dull these last 25 years.