Having captained Marseille to Champions League glory in 1993, Didier Deschamps now has to figure out how to make French football competitive in Europe when he takes over at his old club next season.
Deschamps takes charge of France's most high-profile team when the Belgian coach Eric Gerets steps down in June, by then having hopefully clinched the club's first league title since 1992.
Deschamps, who coached Monaco to the Champions League final five years ago, is more concerned at the dip in form of French clubs in Europe. For the fifth successive year an English team will play in the European Cup final, while French clubs lag way behind with no quarterfinal appearances since Lyon lost to AC Milan in 2006.
"It would be presumptuous of me to say that I am going to win the Champions League, but if I am coming here it's because Marseille is offering me an interesting project," Deschamps said Tuesday night in an interview with Canal Plus television. "It's hard at the moment on the international scene for a French club to rival the big foreign clubs."
Deschamps has signed a two-year deal and his first task will be keeping key players like defender Taye Taiwo, winger Hatem Ben Arfa and striker Mamadou Niang _ who would fetch around 30 million euros ($40 million) in transfer fees.
"We will have a lot of work to do," said Deschamps, who also played for Juventus, Chelsea and won 103 caps for France, captaining Les Bleus to glory at the 1998 World Cup and European Championship two years later.
After Gerets announced he was leaving, reportedly because of a fallout with club owner Robert Louis-Dreyfus, Marseille president Pape Diouf contacted the 40-year-old Deschamps almost immediately.
"To ensure the succession of a big coach like Eric, we needed a big coach like Didier," Diouf said, adding that Deschamps came top in a short-list of "four or five" candidates.
Deschamps also guided Juventus back up to Serie A in 2006-07 after it was relegated following a match-fixing scandal.
"It was the right moment," Deschamps said. "I already had an interview with Marseille two years ago, but the conditions weren't in place (then)."
His appointment, Diouf said, was met with unanimous approval.
"My past as a player with Marseille offers me credibility. The fans will be very demanding of me, I don't expect any favors," said Deschamps, who won French titles with Marseille in 1991 and 1992.
Deschamps remains the youngest captain ever to lead a team to the Champions League title, when L'OM upset Italian giant AC Milan 1-0 in 1993.
The image of the 24-year-old Deschamps lifting the trophy high above his head on an electric night in Munich is still vivid in the minds of Marseille's fans, especially as they have won nothing since.
It could have been the start of a golden period for French club football, instead the opposite happened as Marseille was caught in a match-fixing scandal, stripped of its 1993 league title and relegated to the second division, hounded by allegations of corruption and crippled by huge debts under the former owner Bernard Tapie.
Now, under Diouf's presidency, the club has become more stable and competitive once again. With four matches remaining, Marseille is level on points with Bordeaux and tops the league on goal difference.
