Football: second in L1, qualified in C1, OM still flirts with the crisis

It is the prospect of a double blade which now weighs on Olympique de Marseille. After the announcement, Thursday, May 14, of the separation of the club and its sporting director Andoni Zubizarreta, already not frankly reassuring, it is now the future of its trainer André Villas-Boas which seems questioned. A backstage revolution that further complicates the preparation of a season already complicated by the reduced leeway of the Marseille club.

Olympique de Marseille thanks Andoni Zubizarreta for his 4 years of collaboration 🔵⚪️

But it is not surprisingly the name of the Portuguese coach who has been on everyone's lips in Marseille for 24 hours. "The ball is in his court," they say to OM. The club proposed to the technician to extend his contract, which still runs a season until 2021. But "AVB" had several times publicly linked his fate to that of Andoni Zubizarreta, the man who had brought him on the Canebière.

Strong character

If he leaves, it will be hard to replace a coach so popular with his players, the public and even OM followers, who appreciate his outspokenness. After interviews with its president, Jacques-Henri Eyraud this week, Villas-Boas returned to his home in Porto to make his decision. Fiercely independent, he had several times explained that he could take his clicks and slaps and leave if the situation no longer suited him.

"I left my Chinese contract of 12 million euros per year without taxes to make the Dakar", he illustrated by way of example on January 15, the day when he was a little out of his hinges to defend " Zubi ", considering that the recruitment of adviser Paul Aldridge encroached on the reserved domain of the sports director.

Beyond its strong link with the Basque, AVB wants a competitive team for next season. He did not bring OM back to the Champions League "to do extras," he said recently on RMC. However, financial fair play requires, the club will not have large means, not enough to make the Portuguese want to stay ...

No sports warranty

After three seasons in a row in deficit, "essential and planned investments for the first phase of the project", we insist at the club, OM is also struck, like everyone else, by the financial crisis caused by the coronavirus.

The club must reduce costs, including wages (127 million euros in payroll last season). Some of the highest paid players, like Dutchman Kevin Strootman, should be sold for around 500,000 euros gross monthly. Failure to transfer him last summer is one of the failures attributable to Zubizarreta, precisely.

To make money, OM must also sell. The transfers of Maxime Lopez, trained at the club, Morgan Sanson or Duje Caleta-Car could bring in. But to recruit and strengthen in order to play on all fronts, OM will run out of cash. You will have to look for loans or good deals.

Of the current workforce, Dimitri Payet or Florian Thauvin have publicly announced that they want to stay, but "Dim" had also warned in the season, like his coach, that he did not want to commit to the discount in C1 .

What "football manager" after "Zubi"?

OM has announced that it wants to recruit a football director to replace its sports director. The process has been underway since the fall, we assure the club, but no name has filtered for the moment. French? Stranger?

The club already has a general manager, Laurent Colette, a former member of Barça, like Zubi, and of AS Rome, but it does not have the label "football". The management wants to be reassuring, explains that "Zubi" has fulfilled its mission, to structure the club. But the "phase 2" of the project begins in turmoil.

Certainly, the giant of Marseille is never quiet. He could rest serenely on a perfectly successful sports season and prepare for the next with the money promised by the C1 (at least 60 million euros) and by the new, more lucrative L1 TV rights contract.

Before the announcement of the departure of Zubizarreta, OM already had to fight against the rumor of a sale, always denied by Eyraud and the owner Frank McCourt. According to Challenges magazine, a close adviser to the Saudi billionaire Al-Walid ben Talal, the French business banker Kacy Grine, had suggested the idea of ​​buying the club, but the American does not seem to be selling. This front seems under control, but the wind of the storm blows again on OM.

With AFP

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