Marseille vs PSG: the Classique arrives with Marseille on four straight defeats and Hakimi training alone
Marseille reach the Classique on three points from four league games and four straight defeats, the last a 4-1 in Istanbul with three goals conceded between the 56th minute and the 81st. Paris moved Luis Enrique's press conference to Friday and have not ruled Hakimi out. Meanwhile the club's supporters have challenged the travel ban before the Conseil d'État. With our call on the game.
The first Classique of the season kicks off at the Vélodrome on Sunday at 20:45 local time. Marseille arrive on a run of four straight defeats and three points from four league games, PSG with five points and one league win. Two things around the fixture were settled today: Paris moved their manager's press conference forward to Friday, and the club's supporters went to the Conseil d'État over the ban on travelling to Marseille.
Four defeats in a row, and nearly always in the same half hour
The run reads: Monaco 2-0 Marseille, Marseille 2-3 Paris FC, Rennes 1-0 Marseille and, on Thursday night in Istanbul, Beşiktaş 4-1 Marseille — the last of them on the opening matchday of the Europa League.
What matters more than the scoreline is when the goals go in. In Istanbul it was 1-1 at the break and three goals arrived between the 56th minute and the 81st. It is the pattern of the previous weeks: level first halves, collapsing second halves.
Bruno Génésio said as much on Canal+: his side had the upper hand early in the second half until the second goal, and then fell apart; they lose their tactical organisation. He ruled out physical excuses and added the line the French press picked up everywhere — these are not the best moments of his career — and he settled the count himself: four defeats in a row in all competitions.
The best of his players was 20-year-old Keyliane Abdallah, who made it 1-1 from an Abdelli ball in behind.
In the league Marseille have three points from four matches, one win and three defeats, six scored and six conceded: the same points as Le Mans and Auxerre. The win was 4-0 against Strasbourg on the opening weekend.
Thursday's rotation, and who read it as a choice for Sunday
Génésio changed a lot in Istanbul, with Gouiri and Paixao starting on the bench. His own explanation was that he did not want to waste the Europa League and that players with fewer minutes deserved some. The reading that he was saving his starters for the Classique belongs to the French press: it is an interpretation, not a quote.
The last time the Vélodrome hosted a club from Paris
It finished 2-3, on Sunday 6 September, against newly promoted Paris FC: a hat-trick from Lassine Sinayoko (1, 19 and 86 from the spot) and two from Amine Gouiri (8 and 53). On Sunday the other Paris club comes to town.
The boardroom has changed too: Pablo Longoria stopped being president on 1 March, and since 2 July the chair has belonged to Stéphane Richard, the former Orange chief executive, appointed on 10 April. Marseille's summer, according to Eurosport, ended without a single signing.
Paris: a near-full squad, Hakimi working alone
Achraf Hakimi came off in the 39th minute at Brest last Sunday. The club's medical statement of 14 September describes a slight lesion to the right thigh, with two days of treatment and a fresh assessment. Today Paris said the Morocco full-back is doing individual work on the pitch as part of his recovery programme: the club has not ruled him out, while the French press expects him not to be risked on Sunday. The rest of the squad trained almost in full.
One organisational detail did not go unnoticed: Luis Enrique's press conference was not held on the eve of the game, as it always is, but today at the Campus in Poissy, with only the first fifteen minutes of training open to the media and the final session set for Saturday at 11:00. The club gave no reason for moving it.
In the Ligue 1 Paris have five points from four games, level with Brest and Lorient, with six scored and six conceded: their first league win came last weekend at Brest.
The Paris supporters, the ban and the appeal
There are two orders, and they should be kept apart. The first is the Bouches-du-Rhône prefecture order of 28 August, banning movement and gathering in the city centre and around the Vélodrome from 08:00 on Sunday to 02:00 on Monday, across the 1st, 2nd, 6th, 7th and 8th arrondissements; the league has classified the match as very high risk. The second is the ministerial order published in the French official journal on Thursday 17th, which bans for the whole of Sunday any individual or collective travel, by any means, of anyone claiming to be a Paris Saint-Germain supporter or behaving as one, between the Île-de-France region and Marseille.
The Collectif Ultras Paris has challenged both through an emergency civil-liberties application to the Conseil d'État, filed by the lawyer Cyril Dubois, with the hearing set for this afternoon. The collective's statement is one line long: eleven years of bans is enough.
As of 2pm on Friday the ruling had not been announced. Until it lands, both orders stand.
Our call
For Sunday night our call is over 1.5 goals, confidence 7 out of 10. Both sides have scored and conceded six in four league games, and Marseille have failed to score in only one of their last four matches.
Confidence is our measure of how solid the picture looks before kick-off, not a promise.
Every game with our calls is on the Ligue 1 page and on the Europa League page. The record of settled calls is in the results history, and the individual ones are in player predictions.
