Marseille beat Strasbourg 4-0 at the Velodrome on Friday to open the 2026-2027 Ligue 1 season. Nobody spent the weekend talking about the four goals.
Before kick-off, the south stand had unfurled a “Viva Roja” banner in Spain’s colours. The theories started within the hour. A dig at Didier Deschamps, said some. A provocation, said others. Nothing official came back for days.
Rachid Zeroual, who leads the South Winners, finally addressed it on Tuesday on Football Club de Marseille.
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“They won the World Cup”
He did not take long over it. “They won the World Cup. It wasn’t against Deschamps. I heard all sorts of nonsense,” he said, then broadened the point: “like Senegal, Algeria… When a team nobody expected shocks everyone with its collective play… They impressed me, and in my group there are Spaniards. We’re a mixed bunch. No bad ideas, brothers, don’t start reading too much into it.”
The timing explains a lot. Spain lifted the World Cup on July 19, barely a month before Ligue 1 came back. La Roja are the team everyone is still talking about, and the Marseille south stand has never had a problem applauding a way of playing rather than a passport.
When a supporters’ group speaks, Marseille listens
The South Winners carry weight that goes beyond the terraces. Their statements on club matters get picked apart, quoted and occasionally weaponised. Zeroual has already gone public in recent weeks on OM’s internal hierarchy.
Whether that puts the argument to bed is another matter. The banner is folded away, the season is one game old, and there are 33 more rounds for the south stand to say something else.
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