Marseille eyes chance to strike wounded PSG
The growing animosity between Marseille and PSG has lit the touchpaper for the first major rivalry match of the 2020-2021 season.
A COVID19 crisis, indifferent form, a hectic schedule and a shock loss to RC Lens, will give Marseille renewed confidence it can end nine years of pain and suffering inflicted at the hands of hated rival PSG, when the two combatants face off in Le Classique on Monday morning (AEST).
For clues as to how much this one means to Marseille’s players, just take a look at this tweet from Dimitri Payet in the minutes after PSG’s UEFA Champions League final loss to Bayern Munich.
Marseille remains the only French club to have won the Champions League, despite PSG’s best efforts in recent times, and a gleeful Payet was eager to remind all of that fact.
Stars are notably absent from PSG's crest, the club not yet posting the 10 league wins or the European title required to earn the prized addition.
By contrast, Saint-Etienne has a star for winning 10 titles, along with Marseille's European accolade. Nantes had eight stars woven into its old crest, for each of the eight league titles it has won.
The animosity extends far beyond the playing group. PSG shirts were banned in Marseille after the Parisian club’s semi-final win over RB Leipzig after supporters complained of being harassed by Marseille ultras in the streets around the port area of the city.
The ban was overturned in time for the final, but the lingering discontent remains.
Like many of football’s greatest rivalries, Le Classique has taken on a Shakespearian quality: The regal northern giant of Paris with its wealth and title(s), against the southern giant of Marseille, a self-ascribed club of the people, with a thriving port lending an industrial backdrop.
It’s not quite the 'silver tails against the fibros', but the growing gulf in wealth between the two giants is giving it that quality.
Established in 1899, Marseille has a 71-year head start on PSG, which was formed in 1970. It boasts 10 Ligue 1 titles to PSG’s nine and, as Payet was quick to point out, is the only French club to have won the European championship, in 1993.
Perhaps ironically, the year Marseille won Europe’s ultimate prize, it was stripped of the Ligue 1 title and relegated to the second division the following season amid a bribery scandal. In the absence of Marseille, PSG won its second title.
While the rivalry is said to have been hyped up throughout the 1980s by Marseille president Bernie Tapie - as Bordeaux’s star faded - multiple investments in the Paris club by the likes of Canal+, Al Jazeera, and the publisher of this website - beIN SPORTS, have lent Le Classique a compelling rich versus poor narrative in recent decades.
The activity off the pitch can be as gripping as the theatre on it: PSG spent more than 10 times the amount Marseille paid for its most expensive player – Payet – on Kylian Mbappe and Neymar.
Continued Champions League heartbreak for one club, is music to the ears for the players and supporters of the other.
While the Southern club had the upper hand in the early decades of Le Classique, PSG has peeled off 20 matches without loss, scoring 38 goals and conceding 25 amid a revolving door of the world’s biggest stars.
But with Neymar, Mbappe, Mauro Icardi and Angel di Maria among the big names missing from the Lens loss Marseille will fancy its chances of ending that streak on Monday.
While there may only be a few thousand fans there to see it, the animosity among the players will ensure this will be compulsory viewing.
