A giant tifo raised by the “South Winners” ultras group in support of Olympique de Marseille drew wide interest last Friday. Under the title “Viva Roja”, meaning “Long live Spain”, it went up inside the “V\u00e9lodrome” stadium.<\/p>\n
Up it went before kick-off in Marseille’s league opener against Strasbourg. The tifo filled the front of the southern stand and left observers puzzled, wondering why a French club’s supporters would celebrate Spain’s World Cup triumph inside their own ground.<\/p>\n
France, after all, had bowed out of that same tournament in the semi-finals. Spain beat them 2-0.<\/p>\n
The Spanish media heaped praise on the gesture, but back in France it sparked curiosity and a swirl of theories. Rachid Zeroual, the deputy head of the ultras group, sat down with the “Football Club de Marseille” platform on “YouTube” to explain the background and knock down the rumours.<\/p>\n
Zeroual dismissed talk that the tifo carried a dig at former France coach Didier Deschamps or anyone else. “I heard a lot of rumours about the matter,” he said. “What happened resembles what we witnessed with teams such as Senegal or Algeria (when they were crowned in the Africa Cup of Nations), when everyone was surprised by a collective performance and very beautiful football. Which of us does not follow the Barcelona and Real Madrid Cl\u00e1sico? The Spanish national team put on a dazzling performance and impressed me personally. Also, our group includes Spanish members, and we are proud to be a 100% multicultural community.”<\/p>\n
On the pitch, Marseille opened their new season in style. They thrashed Strasbourg 4-0 to sit top of the table for now, with a much-anticipated clash against Monaco to come next Sunday in the second round.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A giant tifo raised by the “South Winners” ultras group in support of Olympique de Marseille drew wide…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":75579,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[556,5039,17415,28854,17,26914,369],"class_list":["post-75578","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-spain","tag-france","tag-ligue-1","tag-marseille","tag-marseille-vs-strasbourg","tag-spain","tag-strasbourg","tag-world-cup"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/spain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/75578","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/spain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/spain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/spain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/spain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=75578"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/spain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/75578\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/spain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/75579"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/spain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=75578"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/spain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=75578"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/spain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=75578"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}