Twice in front and twice back in less than five minutes: still ill, OM can no longer win and once again had to settle for a draw (2-2) Thursday in Hamburg against Shakhtar Donetsk in the first leg of the Europa League play-off.
“A crisis of results, but not a crisis of play”
How did OM manage to let this victory slip away? In the 90th minute, however, Iliman Ndiaye took a good cross from Pierre-Emerick Aubameyang to score the second goal, which was to seal Marseille’s first success in two months, if we exclude the one obtained in the Coupe de France against Thionville, team of N3. All the Marseillais went to celebrate at the foot of the park where more than a thousand of their supporters were gathered and a real reconciliation, then, seemed possible.
But it’s as if OM were fond of draws (six in the last eight matches in all competitions) since less than three minutes later, they let Oleksandr Zubkov cross on Eguinaldo’s header (2-2, 90+ 3) to see a victory slip away, one more, like last Friday against Metz (1-1). We then saw Gennaro Gattuso take off his jacket in anger, ball it up and refrain, at the very last moment, from throwing it on his bench or elsewhere.
The irony for the Italian technician is that with the entry of Bamo Meïté he had just returned, to defend his advantage, to a system with five defenders, of which he repeated on Wednesday all the evil he thought. During the same press conference, Gennaro Gattuso also assured that OM was going through “a crisis of results, but not a crisis of play”.
Terrible first half
The question remains open, because if the second period, also marked by Aubameyang’s opening score after a nice action initiated by Luis Henrique and relayed by Jonathan Clauss (1-0, 64th), offered some passages encouraging, it also delivered its share of worrying moments. This is particularly the case of Shakhtar’s equalizer, offered to Artem Bondarenko by Clauss on a completely missed clearance (1-1, 67th).
Above all, the first 45 minutes had been terrible, with OM playing without rhythm and without an identifiable guideline, with technical waste at times maddening, including among the finest players, like Amine Harit, who were suffering. But the Moroccan was not the only one to blame. On the right, Luis Henrique was lost and Faris Moumbagna suffered a few screams from Gennaro Gattuso’s technical area.
Facing this OM without confidence, there was a Shakhtar without rhythm, the Ukrainians having not played an official match since mid-December and the end of the Champions League group stage. Unsurprisingly, this resulted in 45 minutes without clear chances, particularly on the Marseille side, with all in all a promising counter, but poorly concluded, with a blocked shot from Aubameyang at the end of the chain (42nd).
The rest was therefore much more lively, with the goals scored and a few other opportunities providing cause for hope. The return match, next week in Marseille, also remains open and Marseille can therefore still dream of a nice European run. But his faults persist and his inability to kill matches and really impose himself becomes problematic. For the Marseillais, the next opportunity to get rid of this bad habit will be Sunday at Brest, a team which occupies the fourth place in L1 that they dream of.