“We want to give a lot of importance to subjects that don’t necessarily have any. “Visiting Marseille for two days, Tony Estanguet put an end, on Tuesday, to a controversy born during the previous weekend. No, the inscription “Paris 2024” will not come to colonize next summer the pediment of the Stade-Vélodrome, den of OM and heart of the footballing passion of thousands of fans.
” It’s not an obligation. We have plenty of cities all over France that will host football matches. Marseille will have complete freedom to put the logo or not,” put the president of the Organizing Committee for the Olympic and Paralympic Games (Cojop) into perspective, preferring to highlight “the very successful partnership” between his teams and the Marseille municipality.
In a pas de deux way “I love you, me neither”, Samia Ghali, assistant (various left) to the major events of the mayor, Benoît Payan, had alerted him a few weeks earlier by telephone then in an official letter. According to the former socialist senator, the possibility of seeing the name of the organizing city inscribed on the exterior cap of the Stade-Vélodrome was a point of “concern and deep disagreement”. “To put the word Paris on the temple of football in Marseille would be very badly received by the Marseillaises and the Marseillais”, estimated the deputy mayor, anticipating a rejection that none of the seven associations of supporters, no more than the Marseille club, would not had yet formulated.
For Ms. Ghali, the link between Paris, the host city of the Olympic Games, and Paris Saint-Germain, hated rival of OM, would necessarily be made. “I wanted to take the lead to avoid any controversy”, defends the one who, on May 26, celebrated on the Old Port with the supporters the thirty years of Marseille’s victory in the Champions League.
Provisions validated by the municipality
If Samia Ghali’s claim earned her a shower of criticism from defenders of Olympic universalism, she also, behind the conciliatory facade displayed by Tony Estanguet, surprised the organizers. Behind the scenes, the latter were surprised by a late awakening on provisions validated by the Marseille municipality for a long time.
This is not the first confrontation with the Cojop for the former senator. For the city of Marseille, it has already negotiated a reduction in the bill for the Olympic marina, the arrival of the flame in France via the Old Port on May 8 and 9, 2024 and a reduction in the perimeter of the beaches occupied by the events. sailing, and therefore prohibited for swimming…
In the words of the organizer of the Olympic Games, each city therefore has access to a “customizable look” to bring the logos of the Olympic event to life. At the end of April, OM and Marseille supporters had already applied this method by presenting, at the opening of the Ligue 1 match against Auxerre, a giant tifo on one of the stands of the Stade-Vélodrome. The flame, the Olympic rings, the date of the event (2024), on a background of a Marseille cross and framed by two Provençal flags, celebrated the arrival of the Games in their city… The mention “Paris” was already gone down the drain.
The same solution should therefore be used in the summer of 2024, with a presence of the Olympic rings on the pediment of what can only be called, in the Cojop nomenclature, the “Stade de Marseille”. There remains a question that neither the city nor the organizer can anticipate… How will Kylian Mbappé, PSG star and potential leader of the French Olympic football team, which will open its competition in Marseille, be hosted on July 24, 2024 in this Stade-Vélodrome which has so often suffered because of the Parisian striker?
