Genesio makes perfect start at Marseille, but Lyon's shadow looms

Bruno Genesio began his tenure at Olympique de Marseille with a commanding victory: Friday evening at the Vélodrome, Marseille swept aside Strasbourg 4-0 in Ligue 1’s opening day, giving his new manager exactly what he had demanded since his arrival — pressing, intensity and attacking thrust.

“We couldn’t have dreamed of a better start,” Genesio savored after the match, emphasizing the crowd’s role: “We were pushed, we were helped.” The 59-year-old tactician had taken care, days before the season resumed, to meet with the leaders of the main supporter groups — a way of immediately taking the pulse of an environment whose potential excesses he knows all too well.

Yet the Marseille context is not without constraints. Marseille must still reduce its wage bill before it can recruit, and Genesio himself acknowledged after the match that three, four or even five departures could prove necessary. Despite a squad still incomplete and several sensitive issues, the club has nonetheless launched its season under the best circumstances.

Yet the manager knows better than anyone that honeymoons between a coach and his supporters can end abruptly. His three and a half years in charge of Olympique Lyonnais are the most painful demonstration of this. Despite results far from catastrophic — three podium finishes in Ligue 1 — Genesio had been taken to task by part of the Lyon crowd in what had become “Genesio bashing.”

In September 2017, his personal phone number was circulated on Twitter; he subsequently received around a hundred insults and threats. A few months later, after Lyon had just qualified for the Ligue des Champions, the Bad Gones deployed a banner asking him to step down. “It hurt me a lot. I won’t forget it,” he confided at the time.

Tension reached its peak in September 2018, when Genesio was filmed losing his temper during an altercation that occurred while he was celebrating his birthday with family — his daughter had allegedly been insulted. The exact circumstances were later nuanced and the involvement of genuine OL supporters was not established, but the episode illustrated the toxic climate in which he was operating. “For two and a half years, I’ve lived with this tension. I’m not saying you get used to it, but you deal with it,” he said shortly after.

At Marseille, Genesio is discovering football’s most pleasant face for now. The question remains how long this honeymoon will last.