In August 1996, OM spent 2 million euros to recruit Reynald Pedros from Nantes. The former attacking midfielder, however, was unable to establish himself under the Olympian tunic. Nineteen years later, he accuses the leaders of the time: “It was very complicated. When I decided to go to Marseille, it was really a springboard for me to be able to go abroad afterwards. Marseille was coming up (from D2, Editor’s note), but I had discussed with the staff and I was told that we would have a competitive team to play in Europe. I had no reason not to believe him. It was a pivotal moment in the sense that I was coming out of the Euros and I needed to recover. The staff called me a week or ten days after the Euro, telling me that I had to come back before then. You have to cut your vacation short. I arrived, I was burned. Despite everything, I did the preparation and the start of the season, and then there was a kind of gear that set in. That is to say that everyone at the club said that we were going to play in Europe, but we had a team to play for survival in fact”he said on the show Foot Farid and Co.
That summer, OM notably recruited Andreas Kopke, Alberto Malusci, Yordan Letchkov, Eric Roy and Xavier Gravelaine. The team finished 11th in D1. Reynald Pedros, who only played 25 matches with OM (for 1 goal and 2 assists), joined Parma in February 1997, then Naples in September. He never regained his level at FC Nantes.
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