Marseille Fans Turn on Owner McCourt as Gomes Can’t Prevent Fifth Straight Loss

• Marseille fans unveiled banners attacking American owner Frank McCourt in a 2-1 home defeat to Paris Saint-Germain on Sunday, the club’s fifth straight loss in all competitions.
• One banner read “2016: Champions Project. 2026: Ligue 2 Project? McCourt Out,” mocking the 200 million euro rebuilding plan McCourt launched when he bought the club a decade ago.
• Marseille made no signings in the summer transfer window after money problems followed their failure to qualify for the Champions League, leaving new coach Bruno Genesio with a thin squad as the defeat dropped them to second-bottom in Ligue 1.

A Decade After the Champions Project, Marseille Fans Have Had Enough of Frank McCourt

The banner went up before Angel Gomes had even touched the ball. By full time at the Stade Velodrome on Sunday, it summed up ten years of Frank McCourt’s ownership better than any post-match interview could, and it did so in front of the one crowd that already knows what it once felt like to have the best team in Europe.

“2016: Champions Project. 2026: Ligue 2 Project? McCourt Out.” Marseille supporters held the banner through a 2-1 defeat to Paris Saint-Germain, a result that stretched the club’s losing run to five matches in all competitions and left them second from bottom in Ligue 1 heading into the international break.

It was Le Classique, the fixture that still carries more history than any other in French football, though Marseille have not matched PSG for over a decade. Gomes pulled his side level in the second half. Two minutes later, Marquinhos won it for PSG. The scoreline told one story. The banners told another, and it is the one that follows McCourt into the international break.

The Champions Project That Never Arrived

McCourt, the former Los Angeles Dodgers owner, bought Marseille in 2016 and pledged to invest 200 million euros, about $210 million, over four years. He called it the “Champions Project” and said it would return the club to the top of French football and among Europe’s elite.

McCourt arrived from American sports ownership with a reputation for turning teams around, and the scale of his pledge set expectations high from the start. A decade on, those numbers are the ones fans threw back at him on Sunday, spelled out on a banner rather than delivered in a boardroom statement.

Large sums have gone on players in the years that followed, without the results McCourt promised. Marseille last won the French league title in 2010 and have not lifted a trophy of any kind, their most recent coming in the now-defunct League Cup in 2012. That drought sits uneasily against the club’s own history. Marseille dominated French football in the late 1980s and early 1990s and remain the only French club to win the European Cup, doing so in 1993.

No Signings, No Champions League Football, No Patience Left

This year Marseille failed to qualify for the Champions League after a chaotic season, a collapse that cost the club millions in lost broadcast and prize money. The shortfall carried straight into the summer transfer window. Financial constraints meant Marseille signed no new players at all, leaving Genesio, the club’s new coach, with the same group that had already fallen short the previous season.

Sunday’s defeat was the fifth in a row for Marseille in all competitions, the first time the club has lost four of its opening five matches in a top-flight campaign. It leaves them second from bottom in Ligue 1 as the division pauses for internationals.

PSG Have Turned Le Classique Into a Procession

Le Classique became French football’s marquee fixture in the 1990s, when the arrival of big-name signings on both sides turned a domestic derby into a genuine rivalry. Marseille’s status as the country’s first European champions gave it real stakes. But the balance of power shifted for good once Qatari investors took over PSG in 2011, and Sunday’s match was the 37th between the clubs in that span. PSG have won 28 of those meetings, drawn five and lost just four.

The match itself was played without any PSG supporters in the away end. French authorities banned them from travelling to Marseille over the risk of violent clashes between the two sets of fans, a reminder that the rivalry still runs hot even as the results have gone one way.

A Club That Remembers Being the Standard

What makes the Champions Project banner sting is that Marseille are not a club asking to be taken seriously for the first time. They dominated French football through the late 1980s and into the early 1990s, and they remain the only French side to have lifted the European Cup, back in 1993. Older supporters at the Velodrome watched that team beat the continent’s best. Younger ones have grown up watching McCourt’s version chase a version of that success that has not turned up.

How Marseille Let Another One Slip

Marseille started the stronger side. Amine Gouiri and Amine Harit combined with pace down the flanks, but neither could turn early pressure into a clear chance. PSG had the first real sight of goal in the 12th minute when Ousmane Dembele got in behind the Marseille defence and lifted his shot over the bar. Neal Maupay then wasted a good opening before half-time, set up by Gouiri inside the box, only to fluff his effort with his left foot. Khvicha Kvaratskhelia came close in the 52nd minute, cutting inside from a Dembele pass.

Ferran Torres broke the deadlock seven minutes after coming on as a substitute in the 59th minute, heading in from Desire Doue’s cross. PSG signed Torres from Barcelona on a five-year contract this summer, and he arrived with a World Cup final goal already behind him, having scored Spain’s winner in extra time against Argentina in July, a strike he said afterwards was “scored by 47 million people,” a reference to Spain’s population.

Gomes levelled for Marseille in the 72nd minute, beating goalkeeper Matvey Safonov from close range and giving the home crowd a brief lift. It did not last. Two minutes later, Marquinhos was left unmarked to meet a long ball from Nuno Mendes, forced a reflex save from Jeffrey de Lange, and scored from the rebound. Marseille’s afternoon got worse in the 77th minute when captain Timothy Weah was sent off for a second yellow card, leaving the hosts to finish with ten men.

What Comes Next for McCourt’s Marseille

PSG’s win moved the defending champions up to sixth place, five points behind leaders Monaco going into the international break. Marseille have no such cushion. A club that once stood as France’s answer to Europe’s biggest names now heads into two weeks without domestic football sitting second from bottom, unable to strengthen a squad that has already lost five games in a row, and carrying an ownership row that had been building long before Sunday’s banners went up.

McCourt has owned Marseille for a decade. The numbers he promised in 2016, the return to the European elite, the challenge to PSG’s dominance of French football, have not arrived. What has arrived, in their place, is a fanbase willing to say so in the stands at the biggest match of the season, in front of the rival that has beaten Marseille to almost every trophy going in McCourt’s decade in charge.

Genesio now has three weeks without a league match to find a way to stop the bleeding, with the same squad he had on Sunday and a support base that has made its patience clear. There is no transfer window to fall back on and no obvious reinforcement on the way, only the players who lost five in a row and a head coach still learning what he has to work with. The next chance to answer the banners comes when Ligue 1 resumes after the international window, at a club that has not run out of history, only patience.

Numbers That Tell the Story

Gomes had come off the bench to replace the injured Igor Paixao in the first half, and his goal was his first in Ligue 1 in ten months. It could not paper over a poor finishing return: Marseille managed only four shots on target from 12 attempts and 1.80 expected goals, compared with PSG’s 31 shots, ten on target and 4.33 expected goals.

Sunday’s win was the 350th of Luis Enrique’s managerial career and his 182nd match in charge of PSG, moving him ahead of his 181 games with Barcelona as the club he has managed most often. For Marseille, the four-match Ligue 1 losing streak is their worst in over a decade, matching a run under Marcelo Bielsa back in April 2015, when a similar run also included a home defeat to PSG. Genesio, who took charge in July, will now have three weeks to work with the same group before Ligue 1 action resumes after the international break. Weah’s dismissal came after he was beaten by a Nuno Mendes give-and-go and dragged the PSG full-back down to earn his second caution of the afternoon, compounding a miserable finish for the hosts.