Sampaoli ends quarantine takes over at Marseille

Marseille’s latest coach Jorge Sampaoli emerged from quarantine on Tuesday eager to turn round the floundering club and win back its disaffected fans.

“I’m working to try and change the current dynamic, which is not the best for OM and our supporters,” the former Argentina manager told a press conference after leading a training session.

“We have to live through this difficult moment together and correct what’s wrong with us. It will be progressive, not automatic. But the separation between fans, management and players generates difficulties,” Sampaoli said.

Marseille started this season in the Champions League after finishing second last year in the coronavirus curtailed French season under Andre Villas-Boas. But the campaign has turned into a shipwreck.

Marseille won just one game as they crashed out of the Champions League group stage. They are a distant eighth in Ligue 1.

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Angry fans stormed the Commanderie training centre at the end on January. Villas-Boas announced he would quit a few days later and the main target of the protests, Jacques-Henri Eyraud was removed as president at the end of February, just as the club announced the hiring of much-travelled Sampaoli.