Marseille keeps the Ligue 1 top spot…

By: Magnusson | April 20th, 2009

After what could only be described as one of the wrst first halves of the season, Marseille managed to come back in the second half yesterday afternoon in Lorient.

Besides the obvious interrogation prior to the game as to how we were about to cope with the double humiliation against Shaktar Donetsk in the UEFA Cup, Marseille was also facing many absences (Taïwo, Niang, Rodriguez, etc…) for the first time in a while and against a Lorient team that will never be easy to play against, anything could have happened.

The game started off slow with a domination on our part up until the point where Kevin Gameiro took advantage of the sky-blues’ defense (let’s be honest, the TV broadcast was so bad no one really could tell if he was offside or not.) and scored his second goal against Marseille this season and his fourth in two years. The kid was great at Strasbourg, a little less mighty now that he is in Lorient but one thing needs to be said in his favor, he always comes through against Marseille and will probably be a recruit one of these days. Let’s not forget Marseille made him one of their priorites last summer and the Senlis native confessed his love for the club and how he’s enjoy coming to the Commanderie when he gets older.

Anyways, getting back in he game, Lorient has bee known to practice a mix of french defense and savant knowledge of counter-attacking and that’s what they didn’t really manage to do yesterday. But our victory all came down to the little things, like Briton goalkeeper being injured in a shock with Brandao (who’s incidently been our best player in the championnat the last month with five goals in eleven games) and then Benjamin Genton hurting himself in th first half. Marseille did’nt convince during the first-half and Erik Gerets must have been harsh at half time since we came back with a reorganization, and at the 50th minute, Hatem Ben Arfa was substituted out for Silvain Wiltord. Soon will follow Koné and Valbuena, replaced by Samassa and Ziani. A few minutes after getting in, Silvain Wiltord was about to score when his kick was touched and deflected into Renato Civelli whom of all people took advantage and scored for us. The Argentinian scored his secong goal of the year and positionning himself for the end of the season.

Brandao finished the job 20 minutes later with a beautiful lefter in the post on a Karim Ziani Cross that reminded his fans of his days at Sochaux. We will need him in great shape to take his spot over Mathieu Valbuena. The game that was far from the best we’ve seen from both teams could have finished with another goal for Wiltord who was particularly unhappy in hitting the post during the ultimate moments of the day.

Noteworthy as well, Lorik Cana and Le Lan got expelled for starting a fight. Which means we may not have our captain against Toulouse. Not good news at a moment in our season where we need players like him with and irreproachable mentality.
Here is a longer version résumé of the match: