How Tapie's sidelining of Barthez launched a French football legend

It is a detail of French football history that Robin Risser’s performance with Lens in the Champions League has brought back into focus: on 30 September 1992, a certain Fabien Barthez also played his first European match at 21 years old, in the colours of Olympique de Marseille.

Just days after his arrival in Provence, the young goalkeeper from Ariège was thrust into the starting lineup by Bernard Tapie and his sporting director Jean-Pierre Bernès for the second leg of the preliminary round of the Champions League against Glentoran, a club from Belfast in Northern Ireland. The choice was bold: it came at the expense of Pascal Olmeta, the goalkeeper beloved by the Stade Vélodrome crowd. The pressure remained limited — Marseille had won 5-0 in the first leg — and Barthez acquitted himself without incident during a 3-0 victory, sealed by goals from François Omam-Biyik, Abédi Pelé with an overhead kick and Basile Boli.

Three days later, Barthez continued in Ligue 1 against Monaco (1-0) and established himself as the regular starter. But what followed became complicated. On 25 November, during the first group-stage match against Rangers in Glasgow (2-2), the goalkeeper faltered. Tapie made his decision: Olmeta reclaimed his place.

Then fate intervened. Olmeta broke his fibula in training, and Barthez recovered the Marseille goal. He would not relinquish it. The season ended on 26 May 1993 in Munich with a 1-0 victory in the Champions League final against AC Milan — Basile Boli scoring the only goal of the match. The “Divine Bald One”, still with hair at the time, was European champion at 22 years old.

Thirty years later, Robin Risser has become the sixth youngest French goalkeeper to play in the Champions League, at 21 years and 9 months, during Lens’s 2-3 victory against Slavia Prague. He is closely followed in this ranking by Barthez and Hugo Lloris, both also 21 years old at their Champions League debuts. An anecdotal statistic that reminds us that great careers sometimes hinge on a broken fibula.