Silence, it’s flowing. Beaten in Lorient (2-0) on Saturday afternoon without even taking up arms, Olympique de Marseille continues to sink. At this rate, Habib Beye’s men even see the specter of a blank season returning without qualifying for the European Cup next season, which would be a disaster for this club, both from an economic and sporting point of view.
And as if that were not enough, it was the moment chosen by Mehdi Benatia, the resigning sports director whom McCourt finally convinced to stay at the club until the end of the season, to take out the sulphate and water all the players in a speech lasting more than five minutes, in the corridors of Moustoir, which will go down in the history of the club and Ligue 1.
Benatia takes out the sulphate
“I have no problem being told that the players I brought back, who were very good in September, are very bad today. No problem. That I brought in a new coach (Habib Beye) who is not good either, I accept that… But when I see the match we are having today, even if I don’t want to talk, I have to come to the press, because it’s a scandal. It’s a scandal,” he complained.
“You play Lorient, which has nothing left to play for, and you don’t win a duel, you don’t have a race forward, you’re not enterprising, you don’t try anything… You look at them and, in the stadium, they’re going ola because they’re making a little bridge for you, hook… Yes, that’s it, the truth,” he continued, with a black look.
A group that already has its head elsewhere?
But this was only a foretaste of what was to follow, because the sports director had a lot of messages to convey to his players, whom he publicly suspected of already having their minds set on their future projects, many of which will be written very far from Marseille.
« When you come here, when you have five finals to play for a Champions League objective, it must be seen, except that it is not seen, he declared before speaking directly to a journalist he knows well. How many do you think went into the locker room and turned the table over? Zero, no one. Everything is perfect, the bottles are in place, all that. So in fact, you play at Olympique de Marseille, you play a match like that and you accept it? »
“There are some who will leave, because they have the World Cup, they already have a club… And then in two months, we will say to ourselves: ‘Ah, damn, he’s actually good!’ But here, on the other hand, you didn’t make the effort. This is what is more serious, he continued. So I told them not to plan anything for the next four weeks. We’re going to spend a little more time together at the Commanderie. (…) Spend the morning, in the afternoon, we go to work, with a good nap in the middle. And we go to work. »
The announced horror film took place
This is not the first time that Mehdi Benatia has spoken so strongly and at such length this season, proof that there is still not much going right in this club in recent months. The last time was at the end of September, after the altercation between Adrien Rabiot and Jonathan Rowe. At a time when Roberto De Zerbi was still the coach and Pablo Longoria the president. Since then, little by little, the two strong men from the start of the season have left but the problems have remained. It was already forever ago.
At this point in the season, we wondered if the OM season could turn into a horror film. You have to believe that we were right. It remains to be seen whether this speech will have the expected effect on the players or if, on the contrary, it could definitively mark a total break with the players. Habib Beye and his staff will quickly have the opportunity to realize this since Mehdi Benatia has warned the group, they will spend a lot more time together until the end of the season to save what can still be saved.
“So I told them (the players) not to plan anything for the next four weeks. We’re going to spend a little more time together at the Commanderie. (…) Spend the morning, in the afternoon, we go to work, with a good nap in the middle. And we go to work. If the players think that someone at the club has given up, we will show them that we are ready to spend every day at the Commanderie. There are people who arrive at work every day at 7 a.m. and who don’t earn what we earn. If, to boost things up, it feels good to spend time together, we’ll do it. »
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