“Two Asturians from Gijón are training one psg and another to Marseille. Who was going to tell us!”. Marcelino’s surprise at his presentation as the new manager of Olympique de Marseille (OM) on Tuesday is understandable. Two from Gijón, Marcelino himself and Luis Enrique (PSG), will lead the two main teams in the French championship, separated by an economic chasm as big as the distance between Oviedo and Doha, the birthplace of OM president Pablo Longoria. Al-Khelafi was born, head of the Parisians, acting as a proxy in the Parc des Princes of the very wealthy and even more extravagant Qatari emir.
If Marseilles enviously watches PSG’s hypervitaminous financial muscle, she’ll salivate from Paris to place it in their shop windows. “This cup is so beautiful and desirable” (Messi’s word) OM can boast of since 1995: the Champions League.
This old desire has turned the Parc des Princes counter into a meat grinder: since 2016, Unai Sandpaper, Thomas Tuchel, Mauricio Pochettino and Christopher Galtier parade on the pavement of Paris. They all bid farewell to a club that has embraced a short-term culture that believes the Champions League can be bought with money like oil from the Persian Gulf. Maybe it’s based on European struggles, some as embarrassing as Luis Enrique’s comebacks against his own Barça (in 2017) and Real Madrid (in 2022). PSG learned its lesson: teams win, not players. The hiring of Luis Enrique, a coach with a strong character and a timely command (Messi’s famous incident with Anoeta in his first season at Barça remains in memory), seems to indicate that PSG actually made their choice. return.
However, each summer’s recurring mystery, Mbappé’s uncertain future definitively sets the course for a project co-led by Neymar, a former student of Lucho’s who has disappeared since his unexpected farewell to Barça. As Mbappé drops the petals of the daisy, Luis Enrique promises offensive play in his presentation: “The players will have fun, we want people to have fun every week.” And the threat: “There will be changes”.
Meanwhile, in Marseille, Marcelino puts himself under the command of his close friend and now President Pablo Longoria. There are two decades between Gijonés and Oviedo: Marcelino 57 and Longoria 37, inappropriate inexperience for a president whose pilgrimage among the elite began at just 21 when Newcastle hired him as an expeditionary. They met for the first time soon after. Marcelino at Recreativo de Huelva, where he reunited ten years later in Valencia to win the King’s Cup in 2019. During his stay at Mestalla, Longoria worked alongside Barcelona’s current sports director, Mateu Alemany, whom he knew as his mentor. In the meantime, Longoria sharpened the radar at several Italian clubs, including Juventus, until in 2020 Marseille was asked to sack Andoni Zubizarreta as head of sports management. A few months later, he became president of the club in February 2021 at just 34 years old.
When Luis Enrique’s Spain fell at the World Cup in Qatar and Marcelino was competing as one of his most likely successors, Longoria said he couldn’t be objective because Marcelino was “friend”. “You can get what you want, it’s so good”added. Now both will work side by side to win a championship that OM has resisted since 2010. In that time frame, PSG achieved nine national conquests.
What will be his first exile experience, Marcelino plans to assemble a “dynamic, agile and ambitious” team to challenge the hegemony of Paris. “Marcelinian” orthodoxy against the brutal hedonism of Luis Enrique. French League to be resolved by style clash between Asturians.
“Two Asturians from Gijón are training one psg and another to Marseille. Who was going to tell us!”. Marcelino’s surprise at his presentation as the new manager of Olympique de Marseille (OM) on Tuesday is understandable. Two from Gijón, Marcelino himself and Luis Enrique (PSG), will lead the two main teams in the French championship, separated by an economic chasm as big as the distance between Oviedo and Doha, the birthplace of OM president Pablo Longoria. Al-Khelafi was born, head of the Parisians, acting as a proxy in the Parc des Princes of the very wealthy and even more extravagant Qatari emir.
If Marseilles enviously watches PSG’s hypervitaminous financial muscle, she’ll salivate from Paris to place it in their shop windows. “This cup is so beautiful and desirable” (Messi’s word) OM can boast of since 1995: the Champions League.
This old desire has turned the Parc des Princes counter into a meat grinder: since 2016, Unai Sandpaper, Thomas Tuchel, Mauricio Pochettino and Christopher Galtier parade on the pavement of Paris. They all bid farewell to a club that has embraced a short-term culture that believes the Champions League can be bought with money like oil from the Persian Gulf. Maybe it’s based on European struggles, some as embarrassing as Luis Enrique’s comebacks against his own Barça (in 2017) and Real Madrid (in 2022). PSG learned its lesson: teams win, not players. The hiring of Luis Enrique, a coach with a strong character and a timely command (Messi’s famous incident with Anoeta in his first season at Barça remains in memory), seems to indicate that PSG actually made its choice. return.
However, each summer’s recurring mystery, Mbappé’s uncertain future definitively sets the course for a project co-led by Neymar, a former student of Lucho’s who has disappeared since his unexpected farewell to Barça. As Mbappé sheds the petals of the daisy, Luis Enrique promises offensive play in his presentation: “The players will have fun, we want people to have fun every week.” And the threat: “There will be changes”.
Meanwhile, in Marseille, Marcelino puts himself under the command of his close friend and now President Pablo Longoria. There are two decades between Gijonés and Oviedo: Marcelino 57 and Longoria 37, inappropriate inexperience for a president whose journey among the elite began at just 21, when Newcastle recruited him as a scout. They met for the first time soon after. Marcelino at Recreativo de Huelva, where he reunited ten years later in Valencia to win the King’s Cup in 2019. During his stay at Mestalla, Longoria worked alongside Barcelona’s current sports director, Mateu Alemany, whom he knew as his mentor. In the meantime, Longoria sharpened the radar at several Italian clubs, including Juventus, until in 2020 Marseille was asked to sack Andoni Zubizarreta as head of sports management. A few months later, he became president of the club in February 2021 at just 34 years old.
When Luis Enrique’s Spain fell at the World Cup in Qatar and Marcelino was competing as one of his most likely successors, Longoria said he couldn’t be objective because Marcelino was “friend”. “You can get what you want, it’s so good”added. Now both will work side by side to win a championship that OM has resisted since 2010. In that time frame, PSG had nine national conquests.
Marcelino, which will be his first exile experience, plans to build a “dynamic, agile and ambitious” team to challenge the hegemony of Paris. “Marcelinian” orthodoxy against the brutal hedonism of Luis Enrique. French League to be resolved by style clash between Asturians.