Already onto their third manager of the season, a disjointed Marseille welcome S
Les Olympiens threw away a pair of one-goal leads to draw 2-2 with the Ukrainian champions in the first leg, in what has proven to be Gennaro Gattuso‘s penultimate game in the hotseat.
Twice Marseille propelled themselves into the ascendancy through Pierre-Emerick Aubameyang and Iliman Ndiaye in last Thursday’s opening tie with Shakhtar, and twice the French unit were pegged back, as Mykola Matvienko and Eguinaldo saw Ma
Pusic’s opposite number Gattuso will not be barking orders from the Marseille touchline again, though, as in the wake of a disheartening 1-0 Ligue 1 loss to Brest on Sunday – where Les Pirates played the final half hour with 10 men – the former AC Milan and Valencia boss was relieved of his duties.
Official confirmation of Gattuso’s departure arrived on Tuesday, and Marseille have shaken hands with Jean-Louis Gasset to take over for the remainder of the campaign; another peculiar call from the Olympiens hierarchy after the 70-year-old was infamously sacked by Ivory Coast midway through their triumphant Africa Cup of Nations campaign.
Gasset will inherit an out-of-sorts Marseille crop who are now without a victory in seven successive fixtures in all competitions, with their only win of 2024 so far coming away to Thionville Lusitanos in the Coupe de France, and even then that 1-0 success left a lot to be desired.
Amid all the dejection, however, Marseille have been quietly extending their praiseworthy unbeaten sequence at home and are now without defeat in 13 straight matches at the Orange Velodrome, where they notched nine goals in three Europa League group-stage fixtures a few months back.
While Marseille have been busy trying to pull themselves out of a Ligue 1 rut during the winter period, last week’s four-goal draw ended a two-month competitive hiatus for Shakhtar, who had only engaged in friendly fixtures since December’s final Champions League loss to Porto.
The absence of Ukrainian Premier League action over Christmas and New Year saw the Miners enjoy the luxury of a few weeks’ rest before a taxing run of exhibition contests – six to be exact from January 22 to February 8 – but any rustiness had little effect on Shakhtar’s powers of recovery last week.
Not until February 26 do Pusic’s men pit their wits against Ukrainian Premier League opposition again, meaning that the visitors will have had seven days to dissect their opening draw with Marseille, which saw Shakhtar net twice against Les Olympiens for the third match running.
Thanks to Eguinaldo’s last-gasp equaliser on February 15, Shakhtar are yet to taste defeat in any of their competitive meetings with Marseille – a run which includes a 2-1 triumph in the second leg of the 2008-09 UEFA Cup quarter-finals – where Eguinaldo’s fellow Brazilian Luiz Adriano coincidentally netted the decisive strike in injury time.
