Ligue 1 week ending 12th September 2010
FOOTBALL IN FRANCE DRIFTING INTO WINTER OF DISCONTENT
by Chris Stanley
Who’d be a champion, eh? All that struggle and worry,
all that effort, and for what? For everybody to hate you and hope that you fall
on your behind at some point in the immediate future. Yeah, you get a trophy
and a medal, but what exactly does that get you? Not player loyalty, that’s for
sure. As Ligue 1’s incumbent champions Olympique de Marseille are currently
finding out, sometimes a championship can be more trouble than it’s worth.
It’s hardly surprising L’OM are having trouble finding
form. Since the events of the summer, French football has found itself in an
awkward, being-forced-to-attend-Relate-meetings relationship with the public.
The malaise surrounding the national team has undoubtedly bled into the nascent
Championnat season to such an extent that were it not for the comically inept
Arles-Avignon (possible inspiration: Norman Wisdom’s early years), the rest of
the league would be being propped up by Lens, Bordeaux, Auxerre and Lyon
respectively. Not good for a nation desperately short on confidence.
Marseille are a staggering seven points off the pace
after five games, a gap which even Bernard Tapie might dismiss as impossible to
do anything about. L’OM did show signs that it’s nothing more than a sluggish
start against Monaco on Sunday night, with current French darling Mathieu
Valbuena scoring one and having another shot turned into the net by Monaco’s
Adriano, but if Didier Deschamps’ team are to have any chance of replicating
their late season surge they need Andre-Pierre Gignac to ignore his dodgy
ankles until at least the mid-season break. You might remember Gignac from the
World Cup as the French striker who ran a bit, looked knackered and did a fair
amount of shrugging. While that doesn’t mark him out as the black sheep of the
squad, it’s tough to see at the moment why exactly Marseille paid €16 million
to yank him away from Toulouse. Gignac top-scored in Ligue 1 the season before
last but at the moment he’s more Darren Anderton than Darren Bent.
Not so Monaco. Guy Lacombe watched his young and
energetic side twice take the lead before crumbling at the back to cement their
place in the top half of the table. An inspired performance from Korea’s
Chu-Young Park (how the Monegasques are glad they rebuffed potential suitors
over the summer) was the high point of a more than creditable draw for the
principality.
Up at the top, Toulouse continued their sparkling
early season form despite losing to a resurgent Saint-Etienne. Four wins from
five have given them the thinnest of breathing spaces at the top of the league
that have the TFC faithful hopeful of a consistent and glorious season,
although the wonderfully named coach Alain Casanova is doing his best to
downplay the blistering pace his team is setting.
Saint-Etienne’s win courtesy of Laurent Batlles
first-half strike meant that ASSE (snigger) ended the weekend in third spot, a
position not seen since Shaddup Ya Face was riding high in the pop
charts (in Britain, at least; it’s still number one in Norway). Les Verts
supporters, more used to lip-quivering about relegation than reaching a
Champions League spot, have no idea how they got there but if they’re still
clinging on after a fixture list which includes Montpellier, Lyon, Marseille
Nice and Caen (three of whom occupy the spaces directly below them) then the
green coming from the top of the Massif Central might not just consist of
sporting jealousy.
The team that make up the filling in a violet and
green sandwich at the top in France are Rennes, who aside from being £13
million richer courtesy of Sunderland, managed to win at the death at home to
Sochaux. They may have lost Asamoah Gyan to the picturesque Wearside coast but
around five hours after the Ghanaian was scoring on his Premier League debut, his
old team was cementing a well-deserved second place thanks to Kader Mangane’s 93rd
minute tap-in. No losses yet for the Bretons in 2010-11.
Lille took the honours in the Derby du Nord
with a 4-1 hiding over Lens. Lens have Arles-Avingnon to thank after sparing
their blushes, being ambushed as they were 4-0 by PSG, who stopped their own
rot of three consecutive losses. Arles coach Michel Estevan seems to be rapidly
running out of excuses and ideas with five losses on the bounce and a minus
eight goal difference.
But there are stormclouds further south as Bordeaux’s
terrible start to life after Laurent Blanc carried on as they lost away to
fourth-place Nancy. The best they could manage was a consolation penalty deep
into stoppage time after Nancy had already wrapped up the points and manager
Jean Tigana, no doubt sucking on a cocktail stick like WWF wrestler Razor
Ramone, admitted that Bordeaux have been displaying relegation form since the
start of the year. On the evidence presented thus far, Blanc has jumped from
the frying pan into a slightly less roasting fire.
Elsewhere, it was as thrilling as a Katherine Jenkins
interview, with Lyon’s 1-1 draw with Valenciennes only notable for the full
debut of Yoann Gourcuff in OL’s colours (white, white and, er, white with blue
trim), Auxerre warmed up for their trip to face AC Milan with a pointless point
against surprise package Caen, Montpellier conceded their first goal this
season in a shock reverse against Nancy, and Lorient held Brest (arf arf) in a
Breton derby so dull not even a rag-week pun by your correspondent could give
it any colour.
Things got worse for the fragile French psyche in the
Champions League in midweek as Marseille lost at home to Spartak Moscow,
Auxerre were blitzed by two goals from a striker with less mobility than a
chest freezer and though Lyon won 1-0 against a floundering Schalke, even that
was an own goal by a player who was sent off less than twenty minutes later.
PSG began their Europa League campaign with a slim 1-0 away to Sevilla but
Lille crashed to a 2-1 defeat to Sporting Lisbon.
So as autumn draws in it’s getting darker by degrees
for France and its big guns, who need something to light their way as the game
tries desperately to come in from the cold.
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