MONACO — Not long after Frank McCourt arrived at his luxury hotel here, there was a knock at the door. A valet had returned with a newly pressed shirt. McCourt, freshening up after an overnight trans-Atlantic flight, called out from the bathroom with an instruction to hang the shirt in the closet.

McCourt carried on with his ablutions. The valet, in that smooth, five-star silence, carefully slid the shirt onto the rail and, without seeing McCourt, prepared to slip out the door. As he was leaving, though, he could not help himself. “Allez l’O.M.,” the valet said, and vanished.

That sort of encounter is fairly standard in France, McCourt has discovered. Even before he completed his 2016 takeover of Olympique de Marseille, the country’s most popular, most fervidly followed, most compelling club, it had become abundantly clear just what he was getting into.

There was the time, for example, he attended a wedding in Provence — not long after he sold the Los Angeles Dodgers, ending a forgettable experience for all involved, and long before he was considering investing in French soccer — and talk turned to sports. “Being in that part of France, that meant Marseille,” he said.