Le Havre-OM (1-3): Coach's reaction

How do you feel after this success and qualification?

I'm very happy for the players, the club, the fans and the city of Marseille, which is special and lives for football. It's a privilege, an honour and a chance to play football in Marseille, but it's also a duty because it's not easy. We deserve to qualify for the Champions League and finish second. We want second place; the championship isn't over yet. In sport, football and life, merit counts, and we deserve second place. So we're going to push hard in the last week to finish the championship behind PSG. We've spent the whole season in second place with a reshuffled team, refereeing decisions, defeats, controversies sometimes invented by journalists... It's really important to finish the season behind PSG, who are a great team. It would be more than a miracle. Throughout the season, you may have underestimated what we were doing here, that it was something normal. But it's not. In ten years, OM has qualified for the Champions League three times, and this will be the fourth. We finished eighth last year, we reduced salaries, we didn't spend money in the transfer market like our direct competitors did, so sometimes people didn't appreciate all the work done by the club and the staff.

What are you most proud of in this match?

This match sums up our season. We played well, but we fell asleep at one point because we conceded a goal after the break. We came back onto the pitch as if we were walking the dog. But our pride came back. We can make technical or tactical mistakes, but in the end, we put our hearts into it. We managed to break the deadlock, we suffered, but that makes me happy because I don't want a team without pride or character. I want a team that plays well but also with pride and character.

After Marseille's third goal, you ran towards the Olympique supporters. What were you feeling at that moment?

Yes, I wanted us to celebrate with our fans. There was no frustration. The frustration perhaps comes from people who can't accept that OM has been second all season. It was just happiness, joy. It's on the other side that there may be frustration. The frustration of seeing Rabiot, who is one of the greatest French players, wearing the OM shirt, or Greenwood scoring 20 goals this season. It may be hard for some people to accept. For us, there was no frustration, we just wanted to celebrate qualifying with our fans who have always been behind us, even in Reims, where we lost, and in Monaco, where we lost 3-0. They booed us, it's true, but I come from Italy, I know the stands and the fans well. Our fans have always behaved well throughout the season.

A word about Mason Greenwood, who scored the goal that made it 2-1 and sent you into the Champions League...

Mason Greenwood is very young. He spent almost two years without playing and has never played for a club fighting to qualify for the Champions League. And he played a season as a starter with 34 games... It reflects our season, with too many ups and downs. There were the defeats against Auxerre and Reims, but that's part of our journey. You also have to look at the league as a whole, Strasbourg, Lille, Lyon, Nice... All the teams have had nine or ten defeats. You have to take that into account when analysing the season. You also have to take into account the environment in Marseille. Historically, it's not easy to play football in Marseille. That's why it's important to isolate yourself sometimes. That's what we did with the training camp in Rome. It was necessary. After Rome, we had three wins and a draw, so Rome brought us luck.

On a personal level, where do you rank this Champions League qualification in your career?

Along with qualifying for the Europa League with Brighton, it's one of the biggest successes of my career. I'm very happy about it. I'm happy to have contributed and to have helped the players. They're the ones who managed to get OM back into the Champions League. It was important and it annoyed me to read that there was a mutiny, that the players were against me. It was all completely untrue. It affected me a lot because as a coach, people can say I'm good or bad, but everywhere I've worked in my 12-year career, I've always had a very good relationship with the players and the fans. There have sometimes been problems with clubs, but almost never with players. Not everyone can be happy, especially when you're not playing, you're not happy... But I'm only focusing on qualifying and I want us to finish second. There's still one result to go and I want us to finish even better.