For whom the biggest frustration? It’s hard to get an idea, including among the main players in a Marseille – Strasbourg with a completely improbable scenario on Sunday evening (2-2). But the reactions of each and every one, at the final whistle or at the microphones in the process, ultimately leave little room for doubt: Frédéric Antonetti may well have assured that he had “too many occasions to say ‘it’s good'”, it is on the side of OM that we fulminate the most.
“There is disappointment. We score these two goals which do us good, and then we have no right to take these two goals five minutes from the end, reacted Jordan Veretout to the microphone of Prime Video. Even at ten we don’t have the right, we have to be more aggressive in the area”.
The Marseille club has gone through all the states in front of its public. Reduced to ten following the exclusion of Leonardo Balerdi in the first period, the formation of Igor Tudor held until the break before scoring in his favorite quarter of an hour, that of the recovery. Alexis Sanchez even made the break from the penalty spot at the start of the last quarter of an hour, and everything seemed to be written: Marseille were going to achieve a very big blow at the Vélodrome.
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We change things in the end, it disturbs us
Except that everything changed in… one minute and 24 seconds. Time for Jean-Eudes Aholou, improbable hero of the evening, to register a double – including a sumptuous strike – to extinguish the Vélodrome and offer a point to the Alsatians. This 27th day of Ligue 1 ended as it had started with Lille – Lyon (3-3): irrationally. And as in the first leg, Marseille had a two-goal lead before being overtaken.
“We are frustrated, angry, confirmed Jonathan Clauss. We make a very average start, we take this red which hurts, we hold on until half-time. We start well, we do things intelligently and we lead by transforming what we have to transform. It happens what happens: we change things at the end, I think it disturbs us a little bit and that’s what distracts us”.
Particularly annoyed from the final whistle, the former Lensois had obviously not come down when he came to the Prime Video microphone, later than his teammate. And without quoting anyone, the right piston of OM quickly pointed to what he believes to be the cause of this collapse, namely a change in philosophy.
“We might have continued to go forward, and I think we cowered a bit trying to keep the score. Sometimes the best way to defend is to go forward, and here I think that “We just waited. It didn’t work for us”, he blurted out. Ten minutes from time, Ruslan Malonovskyi and especially Alexis Sanchez gave way to Eric Bailly and Matteo Guendouzi. And suddenly, OM no longer had a foothold.
“If nothing passes, we will say that it is very well played, I think that we might have continued to advance a little, now it is doneinsisted Clauss. There is strength of character, that’s for sure. It’s just a shame that we get stuck at the end. There are things that are sometimes inexplicable and there, it’s just inexplicable”.
Difficult not to see in the words of Clauss a spade intended for the choices of Igor Tudor, therefore. But the Croatian technician, he initially preferred to take refuge behind the arbitration and the exclusion of Balerdi for an admittedly very slight fault but naive, sufficient and in the position of last defender.
The big disappointment of OM players once morest Strasbourg
Credit: Getty Images
Tudor considers his choice “logical”
“For me there was no red card. It’s different when you touch someone or when you push them. Good referees see the difference, today it was not the case”, he cursed at the microphone of the broadcaster, insisting even in a press conference. And it was only then that the former Juventus defender indirectly responded to his player’s comments.
“Was it a mistake to want to keep the score? It was logical, in the last five or six minutes there were long balls in the area. We had to intervene, with the entries of Eric (Bailly) and Matteo (Guendouzi)”. Very distinct analyzes that will not change much in the evening result. But who might raise the tone internally in the coming hours.
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