In the summer of 2015, French club Marseille saw several players leave the club. Gianelli Imbula, Florian Thauvin, Dimitri Payet, Mario Lemina, Andre-Pierre Gignac and Andre Ayew all went.
This summer has seen Michy Batshuayi, Steve Mandanda, Benjamin Mendy and Nicolas N’Koulou leave. That’s not it, with Georges-Kevin N’Koudou set to be next.
Nearly all of the players were first team regulars, most of them crucial, and Lemina is a young talent now already receiving Premier League interest.
There’s an argument to be made that, if Marseille had kept their players and added one or two more, they could have been genuine challengers in France, as much as anyone can be to PSG.
Marseille is a huge club, much bigger than PSG until very recently, and it pains fans to see the financial mess the club got themselves into. That financial mess seems to have been dealt with appallingly, and the club are on a slippery slope.
La Provence, local to Marseille, report constantly on the club and they say that N’Koudou knew on Tuesday night that his move to Tottenham was done. Perhaps more tellingly, they say Marseille’s leaders will be ‘rubbing their hands’ at pocketing €13m for a player who cost a tenth of that.
With Marseille struggling to put a reasonable team out for next season, the leaders at Marseille seem to be missing the point.
