From chaos and eccentricity to stability via Andre Villa Boas: How Marseille has become happy again

The fans loved it because it was Bielsa’s way of playing football, a Bielsa Rhapsody if you will and having only been appointed at the start of the season, that was the first time they saw it. And just like that Bielsista fever swept Marseille. Even the rowdy Marseille Trop Puissant – the club’s band of crazy and battle-hardened ultras – fell in love with the Argentine and who can blame them especially after the club’s recent past? Their 1993 title was stripped after a match-fixing scandal, they were also relegated and were then forced to declare bankruptcy.

And since then, Les Olympiens have never looked like they might even have a chance of sitting atop France with their struggles overly evident. Instead, they went from being adored and the nation’s darlings to nothing but a has-been whose demise has been completely their own making. Since their last trophy in 2012 (beating Olympique Lyon to the Coupe de la Ligue), Marseille have switched from one crisis to another.

Somehow against all odds, Marseille one of France’s grandest and most historic clubs seemingly ran out of ideas and then they ran out of money, yet again. So much so, that their crisis mode became the default setting and fans, despite their banners, had begun to accept mediocrity as the new normal. They needed a drastic overhaul and if the last six months has shown us anything is that somehow, Les Phoceens are moving slowly towards it.

Aggressive banners from Marseille fans tonight.

“You are a bunch of organised frauds.”

“Humiliated in Europe, Coupe de la Ligue & Coupe de France. Executives, manager, players. You are a disgrace to Marseille.” | 📸

— Get French Football News (@GFFN)

It’s come in the form of the last person anyone expected especially when news hit the world that Andre Villa Boas had taken over as manager. At first, it seemed like the typical McCourt and Marseille choice. Bring in a former supposed-to-be-good -manager to change the team and instead watch as everything spectacularly implodes. The 42-year-old was more than eighteen months on from his last spell as a manager. But despite having been cast as an eternal outlier after leaving the Premier League, the world never expected to see him back again.

After all, leaving glorious England for Russia and then China does mean the end of one’s managerial career. That is despite Villa-Boas winning the league title (only Zenit St Petersburg’s fifth), then the Cup (only Zenit St Petersburg’s fourth) and the furthest Shanghai SIPG have ever reached in either the AFC Champions League and the Chinese FA Cup. But if leaving England for something else wasn’t the end, then leaving football altogether did indeed mark the end especially since he left for something far less dangerous in the form of the Dakar Rally.

That hands us two potential theories or hypothesises if you want to go scientific. Either a Paradox machine is in play or what if, even if it is out of the realm of possibility, Andre Villa-Boas is actually a good manager?  It’s a remote possibility but what if somehow, all that life experience he earned in his four days as a Dakar Rally racer and the months he spent recovering from his injury helped him? What if somehow his stints in China, Russia, and even England, have somehow translated proper work experience that he has now used to help Marseille use what little they have to try and fight back against the rest?

“At times in the past, maybe I have paid the price for being too ambitious, but I will never run away from a challenge. My aim is for us to be on the podium.”

Andre Villa-Boas

It’s a never-ending list of statistics and given the resources that Villa-Boas has had to work with at Marseille, it’s a stunning turnaround for both club and manager. But what has changed even more is what the 42-year-old is doing to his players this season and it’s a stark reminder of what Jose Mourinho could once do with a team. Somehow Marseille’s Portuguese boss has managed to do what his former side hired his former boss to do at his former side’s brand-new stadium

Hell, he’s even helped Marseille’s oldest player in Steve Mandanda find his best form. Despite being right in the middle of a goalkeeper’s peak, Mandanda had looked like a second-best option for a Ligue 2 side but over the last six months or so that has changed. He's found his form and looks like a man on fire exactly like a certain Dmitri Payet. The once mercurial star who shined far too brightly has now become the perfect game-changer with Payet transforming the course of not one but five games this season.

Then there’s Kevin Strootman and Hiroki Sakai who have accepted a watered-down role in the team but are still somehow flourishing. Then there’s the brand-new generation of gifted youth players who’ve seen the world chase after them and yet ignore moves away to better sides in better leagues. But more importantly, there’s the fact that under any other manager in the world this would be a mess but under AVB, they look like an efficient machine. They look like a team possessed to do something more than settle for second but high-flying, billionaires PSG are just too far ahead.

Now that’s something that hasn’t been said about Marseille in nearly a decade, so what if Andre Villa-Boas, now at the ripe old age of 42, is indeed the real deal? What if his Marseille side could do so much more than be the best of the rest? But that’s nonsense, right? Or is it? They have a long road ahead of them before they can actually do that but for now, AVB and his band of merry misfits have somehow made fans happy again. Now that’s truly shocking.