MARSEILLE want to sign Kevin Keegan as coach to help them rehabilitate their image following the match-rigging scandal.

The Marseille chairman Robert Louis Dreyfus is a friend of Keegan and sees his appointment as not only enhancing the statue of the club but helping his English-style aim of floating Marseille on the stock market and exploiting the commercial potential of merchandising.

Dreyfus is understood to have fallen out with the current coach Gerard Gili, who has failed to live up to the expectations of the club following the end of their two-year sentence in the Second Division.

Although Keegan has been cool about the prospect of returning to football since resigning from Newcastle, he has left the door open by, saying: "I would never say never."

England will play South Africa for the first time in a football international on May 24th.