Marseilles (AFP)

After more than 16 months of absence due to Covid-19, Marseille supporters will return to the Vélodrome stadium on Saturday for a friendly match, an opportunity for OM to test its health control system on 30,000 people, a week before the resumption of the championship.

This meeting, a first with so many audiences in France since the start of the health crisis in spring 2020, will pit the Olympians against the Spaniards of Villarreal (9:00 p.m.), winners of the Europa League in the spring.

The last time there were more spectators - nearly 50,000 - in the temple of Marseille football, it was ... on March 6, 2020, against Angers (2-2).

"I think it was the longest wait of my life," sighs Hamza Baggour, "capo" of OM's largest group of supporters, the South Winners.

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"Our megaphone is the Vélodrome, the place where we express ourselves. Without it, nothing remains," said the one who will however still have to wait to find the stands: condemned for the incidents that occurred in January in the Commanderie, the training center invaded by supporters hostile to ex-president Jacques-Henri Eyraud, it is forbidden to enter the stadium until September.

- "Symbolic" -

"It's only a friendly match," he puts into perspective.

"And if our members will be present, no animation of groups of supporters is planned, it is not in our habits (for a friendly). The return to the Vélodrome is certainly symbolic but the important thing is the championship ".

After a season ended in 5th place in Ligue 1, OM has been deeply renewed this summer with already eight recruitments.

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At the "Albert" bar, the boss, Nordine aka "Nono", will be present on Saturday with his 21-year-old daughter, as he has been since 1981 at almost all OM matches.

"OM is my identity, I am Marseille and proud of it and I instilled that in my children," he says.

Behind his counter, a poster sets the tone: "Anyone displaying a PSG symbol will not be served".

Beside, bottles bear the vintages of OM's participation in the Champions League, won by the club in 1993.

Leaning on the bar, Bernard Fakid, a former boilermaker, 66, has been a fan of OM for ... 66 years.

On Saturday, he will be in the stands but not in the turns, the preserve of groups of supporters whose excesses he fears: "They throw themselves on each other to make the wave. A colleague from Le Havre came out with a broken arm. ".

At the club, we are also "very excited" at the idea of ​​finding the public at the Vélodrome: "To have a stadium that sounds hollow, that does not please anyone", underlines the director of communication, Jacques Cardoze.

- "Crazy atmosphere" -

As an appetizer, OM played in mid-July one of their seven preparation matches against Servette de Genève (3-1) among neighbors of Fos-sur-Mer, in front of 4,000 fans.

"There was a crazy atmosphere, it warmed the hearts of the players who, we know, also walk with emotion", continues the ex-journalist.

For Saturday, "the club has chosen a gauge of 30,000 spectators", he said, to "be careful", test "the implementation of the health pass" before the resumption of the championship on the weekend of the 7th August 8 in Montpellier and the total opening of the Vélodrome (67,000 seats) scheduled for OM-Bordeaux on August 15.

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To carry out health checks, lasting 20 and 45 seconds per spectator according to feedback from the Fos match, the public is invited to present themselves two hours before the match.

Some 150 people will be mobilized to scan the QR codes (on the phone or on paper) before the security pat-downs and the classic ticket control.

But questions still remain about compliance with the instructions.

"If people arrived in the last half hour, half of the stadium would miss the first half. A third of the stadium must be there in the first hour", warns Jacques Cardoze who also wonders about the attitude of people refused for lack of proof.

"But it should be extremely marginal," he says, stressing that in Fos, only 70 of the 4,000 spectators were unable to enter.

© 2021 AFP