Olympique de Marseille is experiencing – or was living at least – a rather successful season. Dolphin of Paris Saint-Germain and therefore well on its way to qualify for the next edition of the Champions League, the club from the south of France could envisage the last ten days of Ligue 1 with a certain serenity. André Villas-Boas’s troops are actually seven points ahead of Lille’s fourth, and remained on good track. However, behind the scenes, the situation seems a little more vague. At the end of last week, rumors about a possible sale of the club by its owner Frank McCourt began to swarm on social networks. In a daily interviewTeam, Marseilles president Jacques-Henri Eyraud wanted to deny any future sale of the club.
“The difficult situation that you describe (the economic context is mentioned by the newspaper, Editor’s note) is linked to phase 1 of our project which resulted in a massive investment in the revival of this club, the improvement of our infrastructure , the forced revival of our training. The club required an extremely large capital injection. Thanks to Frank’s contribution, we changed the profile of this club, in its structure and in its results. Financial balance and economic sustainability are now essential objectives of our second phase of the project, financial fair play or not. Obviously, this virus arrives at the wrong time since we were on a very good dynamic sporting, international, etc. Frank is an exceptional investor and the rumors about the sale of the club are fake news. Too bad for those who dream of it at night », launched the President of Marseille.
For him, there is no doubt, the American businessman is still also involved in the Olympique de Marseille project. However, it should be noted that the latest information regarding the club’s accounts was not reassuring. OM was thus pinned by UEFA at the beginning of March after not having respected its commitments with regard to financial fair play, then, the Marseilles leaders would not have been really convincing before the judgment chamber of the institution which governs European football. Suffice to say that the Marseille club is far from finished with UEFA even if the latter may be a little more lenient because of the coronavirus, while the second phase of the project aimed at cleaning up finances has been launched. And Frank McCourt should therefore always be around …
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