Power, Corruption & Lies: Marseille 1993
Back in 1993, Olympique de Marseille had a team that would make anyone envious. German legend Rudi Voller played alongside the silky Yugoslav Dragan Stojkovic, Didier Deschamps, Basile Boli, Marcel Desailly, Alen Boksic and the infamously eccentric Fabien Bartez.
It was little surprise that L’OM won the French title, and this team was so good that they became the first (and to date, only) French team to lift the European Cup. In Munich, a goal from Boli saw Marseille defeat the legendary AC Milan side, managed by Fabio Capello and starring footballing giants like Marco Van Basten, Paulo Maldini, Franco Baresi, Frank Rijkaard and former L’OM hitman, Jean Pierre Papin.
This was France’s finest hour for a domestic team, and surely nothing would ever take the sheen off this fantastic achievement?
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Bernard Tapie was Paris born business man who has had his fingers in many pies. He owned Adidas in the early ’90s and was the head of a cycling team, La Vie Claire, who won numerous Tour De France with Bernard Hinault and Greg LeMond. Tapie was also a politician endorsed by President Mitterrand. Despite all this, he was set to be immortalised as the man who oversaw Marseille’s dominance in French football, winning a host of league titles. Tapie was untouchable.
He provided persuasion and finances to ensure that L’OM had the best players, and one such servant under his wing was Jean-Jacques Eydelie. Eydelie, came from Nantes to Marseille and found himself in a midfield of Deschamps and Sauzee in the first ever Champions League final, fresh from winning Ligue 1.
It was the beginning of a golden era for French football, planting the seeds that would eventually inspire a generation of young players to eventually lift the World Cup, captained by Marseille’s Deschamps. The build-up the Champions League Final saw Marseille finishing off the domestic season in fine style. All they had to do was defeat Valenciennes and they could focus on beating the formidable AC Milan.
Tapie watched as business was taken care of with a stroll, and everything was set for the biggest club match in French footballing history. Everything was going perfectly and to plan.
Then, the worm started to turn.
Weeks into his ministerial appointment, Tapie was forced to resign after being charged in a fraud probe. Charges were dropped, but scrutiny over his conduct would not go away. Marseille’s title win of ’92 had been dogged by allegations of fraud relating to payments to former players.
In the weeks leading to the Champions League final, behind closed doors, Tapie would not allow anything to go off script, and plotted to pay off Valenciennes players, instructing general manager Jean-Pierre Bernes to set-up the deal with midfielder Jean-Jacques Eydelie. Jacques Glassmann, Christophe Robert and World Cup winner Jorge Burruchaga were approached and asked to ‘take it easy’ to see that L’OM could focus on beating Milan.
Eydelie confessed in a book that Tapie instructed him to contact his former Nantes team-mates at Valenciennes, because “we don’t want them acting like idiots and breaking us before the final with Milan. Do you know them well?”
Not well enough. While Robert took the money and Burruchaga played along, Glassmann informed the Valenciennes hierarchy. Eventually, Robert admitted to taking a bribe, darkly declaring: “The world of football is much more rotten than people like to think.” The police found his bribe in his aunt’s garden, with Robert spitting: “That money stank so much that I threw it in a hole.”
This lead Bernes to be investigated for “active corruption”, before he was taken into psychiatric care, while more allegations swirled around Tapie. Even with police involvement, Valenciennes manager Boro Primorac accused the Marseille president of offering him £66,000 to take the blame.
The fallout was huge. While L’OM were European champions, everything around them fell to pieces. Marseille were banned from the Champions League by UEFA, not able to defend the trophy, before they were stripped of the Ligue 1 title and immediately relegated.
Tapie remained defiant. Ironically, facing Silivio Berlusconi’s AC Milan, Tapie had parliamentary immunity. No-one could touch him. However, after Eydelie alleged that the club president attempted to buy his silence, a fresh investigation removed his political rights and eventually, he and the club were found guilty of corruption.
A mere two years after France’s finest footballing hour, where Le Figaro described OM’s president as “like a Roman general at the head of his legionnaires”, he was cast aside and sent to prison.
Olympique de Marseille managed to regain their place in Ligue 1. After a 17 year wait, they finally got their hands on silverware after a series of narrow misses,winning the Coupe de la Ligue and two months later, winning their first league championship in 18 years and are, once again, a powerhouse in French football.
Barnard Tapie, unbelievably, went into songwriting and acting.
*this piece originally featured on Campo Retro’s ‘Backpages’ blog.
