European Football: Parisian takeover embarrasses Marseille

MARSEILLE suffered another setback on Saturday when they slumped to a 3-0 home defeat to Auxerre as their rivals, Paris-St-Germain, beat Toulouse 2-1 to recapture the French league leadership.

Without Alen Boksic, Paulo Futre and Marcel Desailly, all sold to Italian clubs, the Marseille coach, Marc Bourrier, had to pick a largely untested squad who could not match Auxerrre. The visitors moved in front after 16 minutes thanks to Corentin Martins and wrapped it up in the last 10 minutes with goals by Christophe Cocard and Lilian Laslandes. PSG won 2-1 with Valdo notching the vital goal.

In Spain the champions, Barcelona, lost their first home game of the season - Jaime Quesada's 86th-minute goal giving bottom-of-the-table Lerida victory. The leaders, Seville, lost 1-0 to Valencia.

An own goal by John de Wolf cost the Dutch leaders, Feyenoord, a point against Vitesse Arnhem. Ajax thrashed Groningen 4-0 to cut the gap at the top to one point.

This will come as no shock to East Anglians but Bayern Munich could only draw 1-1 with the Bundesliga's worst club, Schalke.