For a supposed persona non grata, this was quite a salute. Mason Greenwood, the winger embroiled in such an unpleasant turmoil in England that he has He had to rebuild his career abroad.received the most guttural of Marseille welcomes on this sweltering Mediterranean night. In the most vivid illustration that football can erase anything if the price is right, the 22-year-old walked out to make his home debut here not to a chorus of whistles but to a wall of appreciative noise from the fans who enveloped him in a cloud of orange smoke.
Greenwood’s No. 10 was by far the most popular shirt in the packed Stade Velodrome. Dimitri Payet, regarded as a club legend for the emotional attachment he inspired, often wore the number. And against all logic, there are early signs that Greenwood could forge an equally intense bond. In a team devoid of star quality and in a French league opened up by Kylian Mbappé. Leaving Paris St-Germain for Real MadridHe is the lightning rod for Marseille’s followers’ desperation to anoint someone, anyone, as their saviour. In a way, he justified his faith here, masterminding the pride-saving equaliser against Reims.
Rarely can To armsGreenwood’s traditional rallying cry has been sung with greater ferocity. The question is whether the character of this man can ever be separated from the toxicity of the circus he has left behind. The ultras evidently believe it can: when, around half an hour before kick-off in this 2-2 draw, he emerged onto the pitch from behind a blue curtain, not a single boo was heard. So much for predictions that Greenwood would be the object of mass scorn once he emerged from his low-profile loan spell at Getafe on the southern outskirts of Madrid. Whatever the opprobrium, he received only a rapturous ovation. The volume intensified to deafening levels when a deflected shot from Quentin Merlin came in off the far post.
It has been two and a half years since a harrowing video emerged showing a man, allegedly Greenwood, abusing a woman and attempting to force her to have sex. The woman posted graphic images of her blood-stained face and body covered in various bruises, suggesting Greenwood had inflicted the injuries. Criminal charges against him were later dropped and the Crown Prosecution Service said crucial witnesses had withdrawn their cooperation with the investigation.
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Marseille’s argument is that Greenwood, having no criminal record, should not be a barrier to gainful employment. Pablo Longoria, the club’s president, has lightly dismissed any objections on ethical grounds, saying: “I respect everyone’s opinion, but I’m not here to enter into controversy. We’re talking about the past. It’s a complex and old situation.” However, neither Greenwood nor United, who acknowledged they had made “mistakes”, have done anything to clarify these alleged complexities.
The subject is constantly sidestepped: Greenwood merely mentions a press release issued a year ago in which he admitted that it would be too difficult for him to play at Old Trafford again. That is, if you can even ask him. So far, Marseille have refused any mention of the subject. “It’s exhausting,” says Elsa Labouret of the French women’s rights organisation Osez le féminisme (Dare to feminise). “Once again, we consider that talent is enough to turn a blind eye to these accusations.”
The PR strategy around Greenwood is to bury them completely. The more he gives away, the more likely the bleakness of his past will be dismissed here. In a 3½-minute segment on Telefoot, the French football programme broadcast on TF1 on Sundays, no allusion was made to the famous video, the focus being firmly on his passionate tributes to his debut at Brest, where he scored two goals. “What scares me,” said one fan arriving for his first home game, “is that if he’s too good we’ll only have him for one season.”
There was not the slightest sense of a fanbase mortally embarrassed by the nature of their summer signing. On the contrary, their euphoria suggested they had forgotten why there had been such a fuss in the first place. A record 49,000 season tickets have been sold for this season, such is the intrigue aroused by the arrivals of Greenwood and Roberto De Zerbi. The former Brighton manager promising to alleviate boredom at a club craving its first league title since 2010.
The unpleasant but universal truth is that wrongdoing players will be forgiven anything as long as they are useful to the cause. Greenwood is not the first player in France to be granted absolution under the darkest of clouds. Take Monaco’s Wissam Ben Yedder, who was allowed to remain his club’s highest-earning player last year even after being formally charged by the Nice prosecutor’s office last August with rape, attempted rape and sexual assault. He denies the charges.
It was curious, then, to hear Benoit Mayan, the mayor of Marseille, so brutally criticise Greenwood’s decision to move to the city. “I saw images that shocked me deeply,” he said last month. “I think she cannot have a place in this team. The values of Marseille and Olympique de Marseille are anything but that. Can you imagine the violence against women? It’s a disgrace.” In the end, all his promises to convince Longoria to reconsider her decision came to nothing.
As for the “values” Mayan attributes to this club, one wonders what he means. Yes, Marseille took a laudable action at the height of the pandemic by using their training ground as a refuge for 18 women escaping domestic violence. But any suggestion that they are too unimpeachably pure to tolerate Greenwood donning their white shirt is a stretch. After all, their late benefactor Bernard Tapie became the poster boy for the worst scandal in French football history. In 1995, he received an eight-month prison sentence after it was revealed that he had offered a bribe to Valenciennes to underperform in a league match, all so that his players could stay fresh en route to their 1993 Champions League triumph.
As the only French club to have landed Europe’s biggest prize, they dream tirelessly of a return. They currently have no chance of breaking into continental football, having finished eighth last season, but securing the £26.6m signing of Greenwood at least hints at a greater ambition. The equation is simple: if he scores, he is adored. No sooner had De Zerbi marvelled at his first goals in Brittany than he said: “That way, he will be less of a subject of controversy.”
If Greenwood were in any other profession in Marseille, there would not be such a harsh inquisition. The fact that he can reinvent himself at the highest level of football, a sport long steeped in misogyny, has led to understandable outrage, particularly among women. He was forced to leave United because of the fierce backlash against attempts to reinstate him, and was vilified by one group of female fans as an emblem of “extreme arrogance, entitlement and exceptionalism”.
Traces of this sentiment have followed him to the south of France. “Olympique de Marseille is more than a club, it is a spirit,” declared Payan, insisting that Greenwood had lost all right to represent the institution. Elsewhere, there is fatalism at the ease with which he has been assimilated. “It is a demonstration of the impunity enjoyed by people accused of sexist and sexual violence,” said Carine Delahaie of Femme Solidaires. “The vast majority return to living a normal life.”
Greenwood’s existence today would fit few people’s definition of normality. When he first signed for Getafe, he was accompanied by United chaperones looking to help him settle in. Marseille’s staff, similarly, are forming a praetorian guard around their latest acquisition, anxiously monitoring his media commitments. But he does not yet seem daunted by his transition to a club with such a feverish fan base. He is thought to have struck up an early friendship with Amine Harit, the Moroccan midfielder who scored the only goal against Reims. And he has begun house-hunting.
In De Zerbi, he is lucky to have a mentor who is committed to treating him “like a son”. The uncertainty is what will happen to him if it all gets out of hand. Marseille’s die-hard fans, many of them shirtless in the stifling August heat, are a fickle bunch at the best of times. Their mood can fluctuate wildly over the course of not just a season, but a single match. These 90 minutes were a case in point, with the initial jubilation at Harit’s goal giving way to mass discontent once Sergio Akieme and Yaya Fofana propelled Reims into a shock lead. Suddenly, De Zerbi’s substitutions were treated with scornful whistles.
In this cacophonous atmosphere, honeymoons can last just a few minutes. It is a chaotic place for players to be at their best, with the constant shouts from the stands mixed with the frequent fireworks coming from outside. Greenwood, far from wilting under this scrutiny, appears to be thriving. He had a hand in all five goals against Brest, and engineered the rescue act to frustrate Reims and sustain Marseille’s most encouraging start since the years of Qatar-funded PSG dominance began.
However unedifying his story may have been, the rancour that his own name once provoked is dissolving. Whether reviving his club career by the blue waters of Marseille or preparing to switch his international allegiance from England to Jamaica, Greenwood appears intent on a transformation at full speed. That may feel downright off-putting considering how far his popularity has fallen at home, but in football, the brutal calculus is that the end always justifies the means.