Euroscene: A familiar old name has been making waves over the last few days, writes Paddy Agnew.
Olympique Marseilles, the most passionately supported club in French football, last weekend went joint top of the French table along with Monaco, following a 1-0 away win against the little Corsican club, Ajaccio.
That win came just four days after a 0-0 home draw with Austria Vienna was enough to clinch a place in the first phase of the Champions League, a first phase in which Marseilles will face Real Madrid, last season's UEFA Cup winners Porto and Partizan Belgrade, the side that eliminated Newcastle United last week.
In some senses, the wheel has turned full circle. Ten years ago Marseilles won the Champions Cup, beating the Fabio Capello coached AC Milan 1-0 in a poor quality final played at the Olympic Stadium in Munich. In the meantime, with the exception of an underwhelming appearance in the 2000-01 Champions League (eliminated in the second phase), Marseilles have made European headlines more because of legal and judicial problems than through their footballing prowess.
Ironically, that 1993 final marked the beginning of the temporary decline and fall of Marseilles. That side was owned and guided by controversial French businessman-cum-politician-cum-actor, Bernard Tapie. In an attempt to build the team into a European super-power, he put together a formidable squad that, at different times, included Didier Deschamps, Marcel Desailly, Alen Boksic, Rudi Voeller, Abedi Pele, Eric Cantona, Dragan Stojkovic and Alain Giresse.
Tapie had bought the club in 1986, allegedly at the suggestion of his friend, the late French President, Francois Mitterand. Two years before that Champions Cup win, Marseilles had already reached the final, only to lose another dull game, beaten 5-3 in a penalty shoot-out in Bari.
Tapie's determination to keep Marseilles at the top of the winning tree, both in Europe and in France, was to cost the club dear. A match-fixing scandal, in which French rivals Valenciennes were "persuaded" not to try too hard in a league game won 1-0 by Marseilles and played just days before that Champions Cup win over AC Milan, resulted in debacle and disgrace for both Tapie and the club.
Ironically, the match-fixing scandal had come to light only when a bribe worth about $50,000 had been accidentally found, buried in the garden of the aunt of one of the Valenciennes players involved.
Banned from European competition for the 1993-94 season, Marseilles were also stripped of their French title and relegated to the second division. By the mid-90s, Tapie had been declared bankrupt and imprisoned (on a variety of fraud charges) whilst the club was teetering on the brink of total collapse.
The Marseilles revival began with the arrival in 1997 of industrialist Robert Louis-Dreyfus, a man who by the end of last year had invested more than €170 million in the club. Louis-Dreyfus's first major move was to appoint Christophe Bouchet, former journalist with left-wing weekly Le Nouvel Observateur, as his club president.
Having straightened the club's finances and swept out the board room broom cupboard, Bouchet and Louis-Dreyfus finally began to see a return for their efforts three seasons ago when the club got back into the Champions League.
Marseilles' summer signings have included defender Philippe Christanval (Barcelona), Egyptian striker Ahmed "Mido" Hossam (Ajax) and, most recently, French international striker Steve Marlet (Fulham).
Could it be that the good times are about to roll again? The answer to that and other questions may well come from that Champions League Group F where Real Madrid and Porto will provide useful bench marks.
Getting back to where they were in 1993 will not be easy.
