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 93^rd 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.