Former French national team defender Marcel Desailly lamented on Monday the lack of "warriors" at Marseille, the club with which he won the Champions League in 1993, pointing to a lack of mental strength among the players.

The 1998 world champion, interviewed by AFP and RMC Sport on the sidelines of the 2026 Laureus Sports Awards ceremony in Madrid, felt that Marseille's sporting director Mehdi Benatia had "summed it all up" in his speech on Saturday after the defeat in Lorient (2-0).

Benatia had spoken of a "scandal" and denounced the attitude of the Marseille players, who have dropped to sixth place in Ligue 1 after this tenth defeat of the season in the league.

"Benatia is very upset because they are doing everything to put things in place. The infrastructure is there, but the team is not performing. We don't feel the warriors we would like to have at OM. We may lose the match, but at least we will have put in some hard work, shown that we were courageous. And there isn't even that. That's the problem," Desailly lamented.

"It's disappointing. Before, the minimum was to participate in the Champions League. And now we're thinking that we might not even make it, and that saddens me," he added.

For the 57-year-old former central defender, Marseille's difficulties are primarily due to a mental breakdown.

"At the start of the season, it seemed that the team was good. That the choices that were made individually and collectively were not too bad. We believed in it. There was real hope. It's a mental thing," he said.

"Marseille is really a special club. I played there for almost two seasons. Perhaps the players who have been identified do not have the mental capacity to cope with the stress, and they lose their composure," concluded the former French international (116 caps).

AFP