Aveek Chaudhuri, February 3, 2021

Just a few weeks ago Marseille were looking like Ligue 1 title contenders under manager Andre Villas-Boas. And now they have only one win in their last eight games, are in 9th place in Ligue 1, and have no manager. Recently, former manager Andre Villas-Boas handed in his resignation to the club directors after they brought in a player, Olivier Ntcham from Celtic, on loan without even consulting Villas-Boas. The manager wasn't having any of it and swiftly handed in his resignation which was then rejected by the directors who instead sacked him. This came just days after many Marseille fans broke into the club's training ground and caused lots of damage, even injuring a player, in order to express their anger at club president Jacques-Henri Eyraud and his ideas of reshaping the club.

The club is in a mess that they will likely not recover from until at least next season. The team was already in very poor form and now with no manager and a player who is seen as not wanted, morale is very low. Villas-Boas had a terrific start to the season, defeating Paris Saint-Germain for the first time since 2011 at the start of the season and showing that Marseille were likely title contenders. Villas-Boas transformed players like Boubacar Kamara into studs in the league and oversaw star player Dimitri Payet regain his form. Overall, everything seemed to be going well until now when everything has fallen into pieces. The title challenge seems to be gone and so is the manager.

Football fans may remember Andre Villas-Boas as the manager who was in charge of Chelsea at the beginning of the 2011-12 season but then got sacked after 40 games. Chelsea went on to win the Champions League that season under interim manager Roberto Di Matteo. Villas-Boas was and is still one of the best young managers out there. Surely he will quickly find another club to manage. However, it is Marseille who will likely take some time to recover from this disaster. The fans are unhappy, players have low morale, and of course the largest problem is the fact that they have no proper manager at the moment. It is unclear how Marseille will manage to resolve this problem and they need to get things right before next season because right now, this season seems lost.