Triumphant Tapie rides on Marseilles' new pride: Victory at home and abroad for the city's football team has revived the community, and the political fortunes of its controversial president

IT IS RARE that a soccer match can be judged as a political turning point. It may be that last Wednesday's 1-0 European Cup victory by Olympique Marseille (OM) over Milan, reinforced three days later by a win over Paris St Germain which gave the team the French league championship, will be seen as the moment that Bernard Tapie, the club's president, entrepreneur and centre-left former minister, clinched the battle for the powerful job of mayor of Marseilles.

Gone was the controversy provoked by so far unsubstantiated allegations by players from the northern Valenciennes club - publicised after their team's defeat - that they had been offered bribes to let OM win. A league inquiry was adjourned until after the European Cup final. One of the most repeated images on French television was that of the bull-like Mr Tapie, 50, in tears in the Munich stadium after his team's European win.

The next day, in the words of the conservative daily Le Figaro, he rode back into Marseilles 'like a Roman general at the head of his legionnaires'.

In an outburst of euphoria, which lasted for two days in the Mediterranean port, a constant theme by revellers was that Marseilles, beset by inner-city problems, high crime and unemployment, could be proud again. That search for pride is Mr Tapie's to exploit. Although he has not announced his intention to stand, it is a foregone conclusion he will be a candidate for mayor in municipal elections in March 1995. A good indicator of this is the behaviour of Robert Vigouroux, the left-wing incumbent.

Mr Vigouroux, 70, who took the post in 1986 after the death of Gaston Deferre, the Socialist heavyweight whose name was synonymous with the city, is a former brain surgeon whose grey style has done nothing to capture the hearts of the volatile Marseillais.

Sensing the menace, Mr Vigouroux loses no occasion to snipe at Mr Tapie. This year, he ordered an investigation into OM's finances. Three weeks ago, the two men publicly buried the hatchet but, after OM's European triumph, Mr Vigouroux went back on the attack. Without naming Mr Tapie, he told Le Figaro that some politicians 'not only rely on the irrational but raise the fever. For me, that's populism and populism is always dangerous.'

If Mr Tapie does take the Marseilles town hall in 1995, it will be an unusual victory in Mediterranean politics for a man who prides himself on his modest upbringing in the Paris suburb of Le Bourget.

Just over a year ago, Mr Tapie resigned as minister for towns in the last Socialist government when a former business associate lodged a legal complaint against him. Mr Tapie re-joined the government in December after settling out of court. Other inquiries, into a Bourse deal and under-the-table payments to OM players, are still pending.