50 legendary matches: Paris dance at Marseille in Le Classique
To celebrate the club's 50th anniversary, take a journey with us to look back at some of the club's iconic performances.
Paris Saint-Germain had had a difficult season up to their Week 30 trip to the Stade Vélodrome. They had beaten their arch-rivals twice that season though: Three-nil in the league, and 2-1 after extra-time in the Coupe de France. Could the capital club make it a 2002-03 Classique hat-trick?
Despite the majority of the 56,000 crowd being against them, the Rouge-et-Bleu were not overawed by the atmosphere. Ronaldinho in particular appeared inspired by it, producing a number of trademark moves as he shrugged off the roughhouse treatment dished out to him by Brahim Hemdani and Fabio Celestini.
Jérôme Leroy played at OM in between spells at PSG, and he came back to haunt his former club when he fired home a sublime effort from a seemingly impossible angle, beating Vedran Runje to put the visitors ahead (0-1, 28'). Ronaldinho then took centre stage. He intercepted an ill-advised pass by Frank Leboeuf, and then held off the FIFA World Cup and UEFA EURO winner as well as Daniel Van Buyten to clip the ball deliciously over Runje (0-2, 56').
Leroy came close to a superb third when his lob hit the crossbar (70') before Ronaldinho silenced the Vélodrome again. Setting off from his own half, the spectacular Brazilian skipped past Hemdani before slipping the ball past Runje. Leroy turned the ball over the line to complete a convincing win (3-0, 83').
The end of the match was soundtracked by songs from the visiting fans and techno music blaring out of the giant speakers among the Marseille ultras, but it wasn't enough to dampen the celebrations of a first Rouge-et-Bleu win on La Canebière since 1988.
OLYMPIQUE DE MARSEILLE - PARIS SAINT-GERMAIN : 0-3 (0-2)
Ligue 1 - Week 30
Sunday 9 March 2003 - Stade Vélodrome (Marseille)
Referee: M. Layec.
Goals: Leroy (28', 83'), Ronaldinho (56').
MARSEILLE: Runje - van Buyten, Leboeuf (c), Ecker - Meïté (Sytchev, 61'), Hemdani, Celestini, Dos Santos - Fernandão (Johansen, 10') - Bakayoko, Sakho. Coach: Alain Perrin.
PARIS SAINT-GERMAIN: Alonzo - Potillon, Pochettino (c), Heinze - Cristobal, Leroy, Déhu, Pédron (Rocchi, 80'), Paulo César (Llacer, 73') - Ronaldinho - Ogbeche (Fiorèse, 46'). Coach: Luis Fernandez.
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