OM returned to the Vélodrome on Sunday at 17:30 for a pre-season meeting with Athletic Bilbao, and the club went in hoping to nudge the crowd up to 45,000. Around 40,000 tickets had already been sold, leaving the stadium set to be well short of capacity even before the first whistle.
That is why Marseille Vs Athletic has drawn attention now: it is not just another summer run-out, but a test of how much pull OM can still generate at home after a season marked by upheaval. L'Équipe reported the ticket figure, and the gap between what had been sold and what the club wanted was plain enough — roughly 5,000 more seats still had to be filled by late buyers and tourists.
Bruno Genesio was at the centre of the selection discussion because he is expected to name a robust starting line-up, while resisting the language of hierarchy that often follows a pre-season squad. He said he does not favour talk of a first-choice XI and prefers the idea of a group in which everyone matters. In other words, the conversation is less about who has fixed status than about who is ready to start on the day.
That gives the Bilbao friendly a practical edge. Tim Weah, Quinten Timber, Amine Gouiri and Derek Cornelius could start, while players who arrived late after the World Cup had been eased in. Bilbao, for their part, had not added any new signings to date, which makes the match a cleaner first look at where OM stand against a side still unchanged in the market.
The crowd figure matters because OM had already shown what the Vélodrome can do when interest is high: the first of two August 2025 friendlies against Sevilla drew close to 60,000. Sunday’s gate was always expected to be far lower, but the club still wanted to push beyond the 40,000 already sold before Atlético de Madrid and RC Strasbourg arrive inside the next two weeks.
If OM do not get much closer to 45,000 by kickoff, the numbers will underline a simple fact about this part of the summer. Support is there, but it is not automatic, and the next two fixtures will quickly show whether the Sevilla surge was the exception or the start of a better draw at home.
