Manchester United Meet Marseille

Sir Alex Ferguson

Manchester United pack their bags and make the rel­at­ively short jour­ney to the South of France to take on Mar­seille at the Stade Velo­drome in Round 16 of the Cham­pi­ons League this upcom­ing Wed­nes­day. Manchester United will miss Ander­son, Jonny Evans, Rio Ferdin­and, Owen Har­greaves, Ryan Giggs and Ant­o­nio Valen­cia who are out with injur­ies, while Luc Remy and Brandao are likely to return to action for the home side.

Sir Alex Fer­guson: “There is an atmo­sphere at the Stade Velo­drome that is unique. I have often been to see matches there in the past and the Mar­seille sup­port­ers have a genu­ine power over their play­ers. Mar­seille are never easy to beat on their own patch, they are a team of war­ri­ors. That is per­haps down to the per­son­al­ity of man­ager Didier Deschamps, but the cal­ibre of the play­ers there counts for a lot. Mar­seille are a big club, even if they have had con­trast­ing for­tunes in the past few years. Their man­ager has the neces­sary stamps on his pass­port to suc­ceed any­where, so we expect a tough encounter.”

Mar­seille last won the Cham­pi­ons League in 1993 when they beat Milan 1–0.

The Offi­cial Illus­trated His­tory of Manchester United