Medhi Benatia, sporting director of Olympique de Marseille, answered numerous questions from RMC Sport. This provided an opportunity to discuss the potential title race, especially given Paris Saint-Germain’s recent weaknesses.
Benatia: “Teams with ambition can tell themselves there’s something to be done.”
“It’s not arrogance, but when you’re Olympique de Marseille, you want to do a little better each year than the last. Last year, we finished second, many points behind PSG. This season, it’s about getting as close as possible and being at the very top.
When I see this Paris Saint-Germain team, when I see their recent matches, they’ve picked up a lot of points late in the game, so teams with ambition can tell themselves there’s something to be done. And when they came to play us, we showed that we can have a game plan to cause them problems.”
And the truth is that PSG started 15 years ago, built a team with different resources than ours, so naturally it’s difficult. Does it depend on them? I don’t know. In any case, our goal is to play to reach the top.”
It’s good to see this rival, and great historic French club, wanting to do better and move forward. It would be sad to focus on a season without winning a title. We want to see that the other French clubs are working hard to compete with PSG.
However, Benatia’s logic can be questioned. Because we can clearly see that Paris is a little weaker at the start of this season, both collectively and individually. This is understandable, given the fatigue. But the Parisians are managing to pick up points and are ahead of Marseille (29 points), in second place (30 points) behind Lens (31 points). It’s a bit of a shame not to have overtaken them during this period of weakness, which is likely to diminish as the weeks go by.
But we’re hoping for a good fight, with Lens also in top form. And perhaps other clubs too, at least over the years.
