When Chris Waddle arrived in Marseille it was 35 degrees and he looked so pale his teammates nicknamed him "the rosbif." After 25 minutes of his first training, his coach said he looked like a fire extinguisher. Years later he was voted the second greatest player in the club's history. Bernard Tapie paid £4.5 million for him in 1989, the third highest fee in football history at the time, and Waddle turned up two weeks behind on fitness, unable to speak a word of French beyond hello, goodbye, and counting to ten. At his debut, as a substitute against Lyon, he was handed the captain's armband when he replaced an injured Papin, despite barely being able to communicate with anyone on the pitch around him. The squad was one of the most stacked in Europe, Papin, Cantona, Deschamps, Tigana, Boli, Mozer, Francescoli, Abedi Pele and later Stojković, Bernard Tapie's attempt at to build a galáctico side before the word even existed. During those early days, Waddle combated homesickness by watching Paul Daniels VHS tapes alone in his apartment. Then Jean-Pierre Papin took him in, let Waddle live at his house while he found somewhere to settle his family. Every evening that summer, Tapie phoned coach Gérard Gili personally to ask how Waddle was doing. Gili's answer was usually that Waddle was still overweight, struggling with the heat, and not ready. Gili played him as a number 10 initially, not his position. Eventually the coach pulled him aside, handed him a pen and paper, and asked him to mark where he wanted to play. Waddle drew an X on the right wing. Everything changed from there. His breakthrough moment came against rivals PSG, a stunning solo goal beating France's national team goalkeeper, Joël Bats. Within months the Marseille fans nicknamed him Magic Chris and were treating him like a god. He won three consecutive Ligue 1 titles and played in the 1991 European Cup final. But after a shock European Cup exit to Sparta Prague, Tapie let him go alongside Papin, Mozer and Trevor Steven, four senior players sold off in one summer. Thierry Henry, grew up a Marseille supporter during those years, later said Waddle was doing things with the ball at he had never seen before, a king, a legend, a god, whatever word people wanted to use for him in that city. In 1998, Marseille's fans voted him the second greatest player in the club's history, behind only Papin. Decades later, when Waddle was as a BBC pundit at Euro 2016, he was standing pitchside at the Stade Vélodrome, and the reception from the crowd around him tells everything about how loved he still was in Marseille.