The race for second place - Ligue 1 & French football 2012-2013

Because let's be honest, it's a given that PSG will finish first. If they don't it'll truly be hilarious and heads will roll but they've probably spent more on transfers this summer than all 19 other ligue 1 teams combined.

Anyways, the first matches were played this weekend and I didn't see anything. Which won't stop me from saying stuff about this season. Two clubs from Corsica in the top flight ! This means lots of ugly and violent football matches as that is what happens when you play in Corsica and the players try to intimidate the opposing team (at least that's what their reputation is... and look do I spy Ajaccio with one point even though they won their match this weekend ? Why yes, because they started the season with -2 points for violence towards an assistant referee). Apart from that we have Reims finding their way to ligue 1 for the first time since, well, since a long time. They probably won't be as successful as they were during the 50's but must be good to be back in the top league for the first time 33 years (if wiki is to be trusted). The third team to make it to ligue 1 with bastia and reims is troyes, who were already there a few years ago. i expect loads of lame puns on troyes/trois in french newspapers.

Apart from psg buying up all of serie a, the only other big transfer has to be marvin martin going to lille from sochaux. marseille and lyon have no money and are looking to sell off players before they can actually look for new blood. montpellier have sold giroud to arsenal and seem to have managed to keep their other players (much to my surprise i'll admit). they are going for a new giroud by hiring another forward from a ligue 2 team (charbonnier from angers) but rumour has it he's probably not going to make it as well as giroud did - thank you football pundits for such incredible insight. bordeaux and st etienne will be looking to do as well or better than last season, rennes will show good things early on and then falter and tumble down the table to their usual 5-6th spot, nice will definitely be in the battle for relegation as that is where they seem to enjoy being, evian thonon gaillard will continue being a club whose name includes three french cities located in the alps that play in a fourth city from haute savoie (annecy), toulouse will continue playing boring football in a stadium half empty because honestly who cares about a middling football team when you live in a city with a great rugby team and i'm now out of things to say about the other clubs i haven't mentioned (sorry brest, nancy, valenciennes, lorient and sochaux).

I think Lille will be top 2 this season. Okay 2nd.

Seems like a rather safe bet. They've had a good transfer period, getting Marvin Martin, Steeve Elana from Brest as backup keeper and Salomon Kalou from Chelsea (how did I forget about that). Lille is basically repeating what lyon did in the 00's by selling players high and buying good prospects etc. of course they're doing this thanks to lyon buying some of their players for completely crazy prices...

ESPN has started to show an hour highlights show of the previous weeks Ligue 1 action so there's a fair chance I'll get sucked into this.

Nice to see Gourcuff score the winner at the weekend. Lille looked good. V many red cards tho.

Lille-Nancy on right now. Lille in their fancy new stadium, Nancy parking the bus. My first time seeing Marvin Martin. A lackluster first 20 mins tbh.

Kalou just missed the target on a one-on-one

wtf they're stopping for a drinks break. Is this cricket?

Is the new ground nice? I always think there's something odd about French stadia, but I'm not sure what it is - just a feeling that they're not as other countries' somehow, that they're not really meant for football. St Etienne's is the exception.

Nancy take the lead against the run of play. The 35 away supporters erupt. Lovely strike curled into the bottom corner from 20 yards.

Stadium v nice, v square tho' and the corners don't look properly filled in

I think it has a retractable roof also half the pitch can raise higher than the other half for when they host pop concerts. They should try a game doing that.

Terrific header by Kalou. 1-1. Cue Song 2. Why why why music when a goal is scored.

red card for nancy which makes 3 ligue 1 games i've seen this season and 5 red cards!

Marvin Martin subbed off. He's been meh. Dimitri Payet has looked v good tho'.

That would be incredible xp. A particularly dogged away side should be allowed to deploy that option if they can hold out at 0-0 until the 85th minute, and turn the last few minutes into an actual siege.

Bastos got a stunning goal vs Troyes yesterday.

http://youtu.be/Y5ghNpu_QBY

i was looking for that on youtube yesterday and found a 11/12 compilation video featuring bastos and neymar

never really thought of bastos as that kind of highlights reel player....but he is very good, direct goalscoring wing-forward

lyon seem to have about 1/10th of the profile they had a few years ago but a quick browse through the squads suggest they probably have the second best in france

0-0 draw for psg at ajaccio. oh dear.

why is nobody better than newcastle trying to get debuchy? i thought there was no way they would get a chance to sign him earlier in the summer, yet ashley is still trying to get him for nothing

pandemic: the stoppage for drinks is because the matches are played in the middle of the afternoon and there's a heatwave in france right now, so it makes some sense though it must look strange. it's enforced by the league apparently.

nakhchivan: bastos usually scores a couple of nice goals every season but he's a very annoying player. def the type of player who chooses which games he'll show up for, he looks like he can't be bothered to make an effort most of the time. also a specialist at kicking freekicks really hard straight into the defenders or very high above the goal. he definitely has talent and every season he'll have a month or two where he does well and then he just disappears. also i'd say lyon has the third best team (on paper) after psg and lille, but they're basically trying to sell off half their team (reveillere almost went to psg when they got bisevac, lloris has been offered just about everywhere, latest rumour is sending grenier+pied to nice for monzon which would be a really shitty trade). also, gourcuff was injured yet again, during the 10th minute of his game this weekend, guy really has had no luck since coming to lyon.

yes i saw it was 35c in lille

not quite so warm in england but some of the managers, more than the players, looked rougher than usual this weekend

clement grenier was once described as the new kaká

Are Lyon in financial trouble, Jibe? I remember they were talking about a new 60,000 stadium too.

yeah lyon are not doing very well financially. they spent quite a lot of money a couple years ago with few results to show from it and they're also out of the champions league for the first time in 13 years (and the millions that come with it). also they're going the arsenal way, trying to not spend money and build a team from their youth academy while the stadium is being built. problem being that while they were one of the first french clubs to talk about getting a new stadium, they're also the one team that's not seeing any progress on that front. and they gave hge contracts a few years ago to older players like cris whom they're trying to get rid of (but who's gonna want to buy a 34 yr old injury prone defender whose nothing but a shadow of his former self ever sicne a big injury ?). at the beginning of the summer aulas targeted a few players who were paid high salaries and did not seem to work their asses off on the field (cris, kallstrom bastos and cissokho) and said they were the players we'd try to sell. only kallstrom has been sold to some russian club, bastos is in contact with a qatari club but nothing's happening and cissokho and cris have no one who's shown interest.

clément grenier is a good enough player who has flashes of brilliance . he's still quite young too, as he's 21, so he should stay in lyon. i'd love to see a 3G midfield of gonalons gourcuff grenier for example but it seems that between gourcuff and grenier there's always at least one injured... but yeah, the new kaka sounds quite excessive.

how is the new highest income tax rate effecting things

are psg paying zlatan via some offshore scheme or are there really paying him 40m a year before tax?

there/they

PARIS, Aug 20 (Reuters) - Olympique Lyon playmaker Yoann Gourcuff will be sidelined for up to three months after injuring his left knee during the Ligue 1 game against Troyes at the weekend, the club said on Monday.
The 26-year-old, who has been battling with injuries since he joined Lyon in 2010, tore the internal lateral ligament of his knee after six minutes when he collided with Troyes midfielder Benjamin Nivet on Saturday.
"He will be out for six weeks to three months, depending on how he recovers from his injury," Lyon said in a statement.

nakh, i'm guessing you'r talking about the 75% tax rate applied on all earnings beyond 1M€ but it's still just talk rn. but from what newspapers said zlatan has worked stuff into his contract if that law does come to pass and yes, psg will be paying cray sums of money to leave him with a 12M€ nett salary.

Hollande campaigned on a promise to tax all earnings over one million Euros (about $1.25 million) at a rate of 75 percent. If Hollande goes through with this, P.S.G. and other French clubs would have to pay players considerably more than any other club in Europe to get them to come to France. While Ibrahimovic’s net salary is reported to be about $17 million, it is rumored that the gross salary is somewhere near $44 million, with the French government getting a generous cut. Estimates suggest that if the new tax laws were to kick in Ibrahimovic could cost the club as much as $100 million per season.

Bastos got another great goal last night to rescue a point for Jibe's boys away at Evian.

was in the stadium for that game, but was sitting at the other end of the pitch when bastos scored. just before he shot i'd been telling my dad that usually bastos shoots straight into the defenders or high above, and once ina blue moon actually scored. glad he did in this case !

back from Asia for the summer joys of the L1, are you ;-)

yeah back for a few days to see lyon play (and also a bit to see my family when, for once, everyone's in the same place)

PSG continue their unbeaten run, 0-0 tonight v Bordeaux. The Guardian MBM'ed it, which is new.

with man utd so readily throwing away their title perhaps we have a new crapvincibles.

I somehow landed on last summer's transfer thread via a search and was startled to find that lapsed ILFer 'darraghmac' predicted Zlatan to PSG a year before it came to pass.

this post here

malbranque to lyon a year after he quit st etienne

helas pour aulas

Hold on boxall, isn't that post actually darragh (pbuh) naming Zlatan for a mentalists' XI?

France recall Diaby for World Cup qualifiers - Reuters

Lille were really good tonight vs Copenhagen. Digne the LB excellent and a superb MF display from Mavuba (don't know if he's been involved with the national team)

favourite bit of fitba trivia - rio mavuba was born in international waters

Piece on Lyon, http://soccernet.espn.go.com/columns/story/_/id/1151564/andy-brassell:-restructuring-lyon-shuffle-their-pack?cc=5739

what's your take Jibe? I see bastos scored yet again at the weekend, he also wasted a great chance where a simple square pass would have led to an almost certain goal. He was playing on the right from what I could tell, is that usual for him?

found this interesting http://inbedwithmaradona.com/journal/2012/9/5/adrien-rabiot-the-future-of-paris-st-germain.html

the only time i've seen him play he looked skillful but all left foot (which hasn't done robben any harm) so much so that he wouldn't even attempt a right footed cross even after he'd beaten his man and got to the byline.

didn't know him before the game against bordeaux but he seems nice.
quite a surprise from ancelotti. and nice way to answer to the critics saying there are no french players in the team anymore : jallet, sakho, rabiot, armand, matuidi, bodmer, menez, gameiro, hoarau... (they don't all play regularly... but they have all played so far !).

http://inbedwithmaradona.com/storage/adrien2.jpg

great picture, he looks like my type of player

yeah that's a pretty classic picture

Adrien Rabiot quickly got noticed for his passing range and composure on the ball and was offered a six-year contract at Manchester City in 2005, another club on the cusp of proceeding to major, Arab-financed overhauls. But he only stays for six months, leaving England with the feeling of being misunderstood by his team-mates and coaching staff, played in the wrong positions and asked the wrong instructions.

he seems fun

looking at that pic i was expecting a pastore dribbler rather than a slender fellaini (early dmc edition)

Yeah wtf is that about? He'd've been ten then, and scarcely more worldly than the City of them days.

Too early for a dedicated Adrien Radiot thread? I'm kind of gutted he slipped through the 'child prodigy' net, that thread's designed to catch all tiddlers.

He was at City when he was 13 so that would probably have been 2008.

how's veratti been, i am quite intrigued by his looks. kinda romani? and 12 years old

http://www3.pictures.zimbio.com/gi/Marco+Veratti+Italy+Training+Session+Press+o3TtLM3SnTDl.jpg

I'm not particularly impressed by veratti so far but many "experts" seem to find him great at keeping the ball, clever passing...

long xp to pandemic about lyon: that article basically is true. aulas did blast those four players including bastos. i think i mentioned upthread that this is a bastos classic, starting the season very well and then slowly disappearing and only putting in a good match against big teams. at the start of every season lyon fans get their hopes up because he has a few good games and at the end of every season, half want to sell him and the other half think we should keep him because he has good potential, "if only he could keep up the level that was his at the beginning of the season". aulas has had a terrible off-season where he basically tried to sell all the players on the roster. i'm still furious about the whole lloris thing. at the beginning of the summer, he'd said that lloris would be sold by the 15th of july or stay at the club (that's actually something he says very often but never actually does). still selling him on the 31st of august, for such a low price really annoys me. i feel bad for lloris who'd always said he'd leave lyon to go to a top club (which no offense to tottenham, probably didn't mean them). he apparently hesitated quite a lot before agreeing to go there. on the other hand aulas has also had a good offseason since he managed to get rid of cris ! and his whole deal with psg to get bisevac was fantastic: it was supposed to be a trade, bisevac for réveillère, except psg sent réveillère back saying he had huge knee problems.

psg a bit better last night tho' still not completely convincing. They look poor wrt protecting the space in front of the back 4 and it's too easy for teams to break on them. Motta was really bad. Pastore got a really good goal however and Verratti was excellent-the best player on the pitch.

I was at Parc des Princes yesterday. Verratti was so great. The Parc already loves him !
I found Pastore pretty meh but then he scored and gave Menez a great ball for the second goal so it's hard to criticize the man !
Seeing Zlatan for real is a religious experience...

ICI C'EST PARIS !

Some crazy stuff last night. Toulouse equalised at the last minute of stoppage time against Rennes, to finish with a 2-2 score. What is fun about that though, is that this last second goal was scored by Toulouse's goalkeeper, Ahamada, who came up front and scored a nice little header !

(that goal is at 1'25 or thereabouts)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U42D0WQ2FZw

Meanwhile, Bastia's been zlatan'd (his 7 goal in 5 games) and Paris scored 10 goals this week (6 in ligue 1 and 4 in C1).
things are beginning to take shape for us...

i was doing some real life LOLing at Ahamada's goal when i saw it on a highlight reel today

Tonight, Marseille vs PSG and it's probably the first time in a long while that these rivals will face each other while being ranked 1&2 in the league. Marseille surprised everyone by winning their first 6 games after a dismal showing last season and not being very active this summer. Then, they lost against Valenciennes last week, probably so that PSG wouldn't be the club to break their unbeaten run... Meanwhile PSG is starting to look quite impressive after a slow start that saw them draw their first three games. If they win tonight they take the top spot from Marseille. The other games this afternoon also have Lyon, ranked third) play against Lorient, ranked 4th (or at least they were before other teams played yesterday). The third game is Bordeaux against Brest, so not really as interesting as the other two games for the casual fan i guess.

L'Orient have looked surprisingly (to me) good this season. Aliadiere up front!

Very entertaining match (at least the 1st half was) which ended in a 1-1 draw. Aliadière played very well, annoyed lyon's defense a lot.

Not that anyone's watching (yet), but this is 1-2 after half-an-hour - Gignac scores first for OM, Zlatan hits back with a quick brace

2-2 at halftime, Gignac and Ibby being the Messi and Ronaldo of dis ting. Zla's first apparently a backheel volley from a corner.

first half of OM-PSG was great. Both Zlatan's goals ridiculous, the aforementioned back heel volley was with the studs of his right boot, the 2nd was a 30 yard free kick. Gignac's first was p good as well. The 2nd half was dire tho.

hey could one of you lovely french lads pleaaaaase find me a link to stephane mbia's full interview with l'equipe, the quotes i've found are highly entertaining

http://www.lequipe.fr/Quotidien/articles/27102012/article3.html

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/A6NP3TNCEAEAMmw.gif

nm i got it

Le fish mais pas les chips

Beautiful. I'm gonna adopt & adapt this somehow.

already adopted the misleadingly chic "lanterne rouge" tbh

Yeah I love that. Hughes should be made to hang one on his back as motivation.

http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-FpJ65LCYV90/TVjBjvtKyhI/AAAAAAAAARY/31G8AZw7hiM/s320/TLC-red-light-special.jpg

now i'm hearing that song as seductively sung by the sirens of epl relegation rockfaces to an aroused sparky

there's some places your mind shouldnt take you

still, makes a change from singing mary j blige 'i'm going down' outside les ferdinand's house i suppose

eh, after this week i can no longer listen to the mountain goats without thinking about cum on my face. the only way is up.

way to ruin yazz for me as well

in paris next week, should I go see PSG v marseille in the coupe de la ligue or PSG v st etienne in ligue 1?

will the former have zlatan

dunno if either are feasible tbh given I'm staying at the diametric opposite end of the city in pantin

psg vs marseille could be good but seeing as its a coupe de la ligue game, i think ancelotti might rest some of his players (including zlatan). they played against each other a week ago in the league and it ended in a 2-2 match. PSG vs st etienne could be quite good. if it were up to me, i'd prob see psg vs st etienne, especially if you want to see zlatan. tbh both games should be ok, tho psg vs marseille will probably be very policed as those games usually are.
also, i was impressed this weekend by seeing two french team jerseys out in hong kong - one for lyon and the other, much more impressive, a 90's nantes one.

Nice, understated game of Braggin' going on itt. Anyone been in Rio?

Ooh: St Etienne went and beat PSG 2-1, with no less than Zlatan being sent off. I hope cozen followed through on his threats to go.

sadly not

I did see laurent blanc tho

marseille win so they're level with psg at the top of the table but with one game less (their game against lyon last weekend got cancelled). and i'm about to start watching lyon against bastia which doesn't sound like a very entertaining game but i've nothing better to do with my late night.

lyon started off well, leading 2-0 after about 20 mns but their defense looked out of it. 2nd goal was a beautiful team movement started by a great lisandro pass. then, bastia scored a first one, then lovren tackled a player in the box, penalty red card and score is 2-2 at ht. just before the break, gourcuff hit a fabulous shot that hit the crossbar twice (crossbar, hit goalkeeper's baack then crossbar again) - lisandro headed it in but was offside :( seriously defense is not in it for either side but it makes for an entertaining game i guess. now if only lyon could get it in them to win it with a man off the pitch...

gourcuff hit a fabulous shot that hit the crossbar twice (crossbar, hit goalkeeper's baack then crossbar again)

Eh? That's unlucky. Where are you now btw?

still in malaysia right now but looking to move somewhere else in asia.

and a bastia player gets a 2nd yellow for a foul in the box, penalty for lyon and we're now at 10 men a side.

tense end to the match with lyon leading 3-2 into extra time. and durng extra time they score from a briand goal and then a malbranque penalty (seriously this guy is the best deal of the offseason - did not cost anything and is doing fantastic things for lyon, really happy to see him back in the club where he was a youth player). 5-2 final score and lyon are now one point marseille and psg with a game in hand (against marseille)

Deschamps should give Malbranque a cap, I'm surprised he doesn't have even one.

There was talk of him playing for England once; iirc he's entitled to a passport due to length of residence

so France have apparently banned four talented young players (including Yann M'Vila) from playing for all Bleus teams, senior and youth, until 1 January 2014 after they were out at a nightclub while on duty. Seems drastic.

2014!!!

Actually M'Vila's ban is through June 2014, the other four (Chris Mavinga of Rennes, Wissam Ben Yedder of Toulouse, Antoine Griezmann of Real Sociedad, and M'baye Niang of Milan) only until January.

What kind of nightclub was it?

I gather the venue wasn't especially scandalous, but they traveled all the way to Paris from their Le Havre training camp between important U-21 Euro qualifiers.

It's only a couple of hours, and tbf Le Havre's nightlife, you would go to Paris.

true about le havre's night life... the thing is tho, france have failed to qualify for u21 tournaments for a while. and they went clubbing after a 1-0 victory against norway, before the return leg which they lost 5-3. you have to take this into the more global context of french football - the strike on the bus at knysna during the WC, the tense relations between players and press during the euro this year etc. had none of those things ever happened, i'm sure they would have gotten off lightly. but seriously that is some fucked up suspension for mvila.

basically this comes down to the french football federation wishing footballers were boy scsouts, helping old ladies cross the street and all that stuff.

can't believe i missed this when it went up... there's this statue in front of beaubourg in paris:

http://i.huffpost.com/gen/789001/thumbs/o-ZIDANE-570.jpg?6

Statues shouldn't render mouths in such detail, it's kinda creepy

yay yaya banana coming on for sochaux against lyon !

Not Ligue One but kinda interested in this exercise in bloodletting and delusion
Domenech Book

Him managing Zlatan would maybe be the ideal combination I feel. Unless Mark Hughes fancies a go.

Congratulations to nine-man Rennes on turning PSG over btw

Ooh that sounds good, I haven't caught the highlights yet. Btw be interested to find out what Jibe, Baaderonix or anyone else reckon to St Etienne striker Pierre-Emerick Aubameyang, I've been v impressed whenever I've seen him.

Oh man, I didn't mean to spoil things :o( I was going to post the table too because it's bunched up nicely, but I'll hold off for a bit.

No No go ahead, I hadn't been purposely avoiding the results, the highlights commentary comes mainly in a post-game stylee so they'll say stuff like "and in an excellent performance by rennes" etc

Excellent deployment of 'stylee' there. This is what you want imo:

http://img11.imageshack.us/img11/8193/picture3wg.png

The Marseille-Lyon game in hand is next Wednesday

Oh my goodness, now THAT'S what I call a league table. Jibe's boys surprising me a little this season tbh

aubameyang... i tried really hard to get him for my fantasy football thing with a few friends but sadly failed and someone else took him. anyways yeah he's having a really damn good season so far, lots of goals, a few assists too. haven't seen him in any matches this season though.

as for the domenech book i'm pretty curious about it too especially since i heard that not only does he trash a few players (deservedly i'm sure) but he also acknowledges that he screwed up. and tbh while his teams were sometimes hard to watch, he made for a very entertaining coach, which hopefully should translate to his book.

as for lyon, i'm just as surprised as you are pandemic. then again thinking about it recently... psg of course still looks like the odds on favourite to win it all considering their team. but apart from them, montpellier lost giroud and anyways there was no way they could repeat last season's surprise, lille lost hazard so they were bound to be in a bit of a difficult situation, marseille basically have no money and contrary to lyon don't have a decent academy churning out decent to good players.

the top of the table is quite bunched up indeed but i don't expect valenciennes for ex to hang in there all season long. same goes for bordeaux, they're doing well right now, especially with gouffran on a good scoring run, but it probably won't last all season. marseille had a great start (6 victories in a row or something like that) but now they're finding out how hard it is when you don't have a bench (i mean when you have to bring in a 27 yr old unknown player that's out of shape like they did this weekend with apruzesse, you know things are bad).

truly lyon benefited from having a good academy - malbranque was trained in lyon a long time ago and he's doing great for them now, gonalons is doing quite well too, umtiti has had a few good games (which is good considering how often lovren gets injured), lacazette is also doing very well on the right wing and grenier is proving to be quite good, though he and gourcuff have to constantly fight for that one spot in the starting eleven (good thing there's basically always one that's injured at any given time...). finally the other good surprise for lyon was that losing lloris hasn't been too much of a bother as vercoutre has proven to be up to it, which is quite impressive since he's basically spent the last 10 years being on the bench !

Lyon 2-0 at halftime on a mudpatch in Marseille, Gomis with both goals. Just a couple of closeups of Barton, one shrugging apologetically to teammate Fanni, the other him having a go at some other hapless teammate.

Ooh, 1-4 now, 'a bad night for Barton' and a tantalising smudge of red above where it says 'OM'

It was Fanni who was sent off, our Joey was merely hooked at half-time.

PSG lose to Nice this weekend after losing to St Etienne in a midweek Coupe de la Ligue game... and so the speculation begins. L'Equipe are saying that Leonardo and Ancelotti could soon find themselves fired if things don't improve quickly. The shortlist of coaches named is quite impressive (Mourinho, Guardiola, lolWenger) but probably bullshit. Rumour has it that Guardiola was seen in Doha last weekend, about the same time some Qatari PSG bigshot declined to attend a game and went back to Qatar. But apparently Guardiola wants to keep enjoying his sabbatical so he'd be willing to take over PSG starting from next summer onwards. I'm sure Ibrahimovic, for one, is really happy to hear those rumours.

plz take wenger

i'm afraid wenger would turn down the job because he wouldn't know what to do with all that money.

the PSG thingy is starting to become a pretty epic failure since I really don't see this team turning things around anytime soon - a textbook example of the good ol cliché that you can't buy teamplay

but you can buy lols

Wenger even does that for cheap

well, either way it was going to be difficult for PSG : if we win the league, everybody will say "it's unfair with all that money", and if we don't, everybody will say "lol your mountain of money was wasted"...
well, if we get the kind of results chelsea or man city got with their money (i.e some achievements like winning the league and CL but also fail big time), that will be fine by me !
Paris is all about the drama !

i guess just like with city and chelsea it'll take a bit of time before all that cash gets them to play attractive and winning football. the thing that's hilarious is that they're only 5 points behind lyon and already the press is making it sound like their hopes of winning are gone (at least that's what it feels like from across the world). in recent seasons we've had teams not do so great in the first half of the season and then destroy everything that came their way (i'm looking at you bordeaux, with your 13 consecutive victories). they still have loads of time to figure out how to work as a team. i've only seen them play against troyes so can't really comment on their level of play, but that one game was silly. troyes looked like the more convincing team for a good stretch of the game and then psg scored four. baaderonixx and alxtc, you've prob seen more games, they can't have been all as bad as the one against troyes right ?

All their games are pretty much like the Troyes game - which is the problem (not the actual league rankings as you say). After the amount of money spent and more than a year of total carte blanche for Ancelotti, you would expect this team not to solely bet on counter-attacks against lower tier Ligue 1 teams.

well, most of their games have clearly been frustrating so far (with some brilliant moments though). but then, for a while, they didn't really need to do much more to win !
and in CL, they had some pretty good games (except the porto one, which they could have won although porto was the better team).
frankly, the coupe de la ligue game was silly because it was stupid to send the A team for a cup that no one cares about.
st etienne were good when they won the league game (and lucky for the coupe de la ligue one).
I haven't seen the game against Nice.
it seems Lyon will be a serious candidate for the league.
anyway, difficult to have an idea since all the teams are so close at this point...
in some way, I find it pretty fun and nice that with all that money and all, Paris still have this drama queen identity !

and Paris is not only in a counter attack plan, honestly. many times the teams against which they play are just defending and trying to resist against the waves of strikes... like most of the st etienne league cup game !

ha, i like that the coupe de la ligue is considered to be utter shit and a pointless tournament by everyone :)
and well paris are the biggest team in the league, makes sense that every other team just defends and plays really low on the field and considers this to be their biggest game of the season. welcome to what lyon had to endure a few years ago !

yeah, I was so surprised to see the A team for the coupe de la ligue...
indeed, all ligue 1 teams consider their games against paris are the biggest and most only defend.
that's why I don't agree with the idea that paris is only counter-striking.
they strike most of the times... and counter-strike when that's not enough !
let's hope it's not a shipwreck tonight...

as for Lyon, to be honest, they played much better and were head and shoulders above the rest for many years (even impressive in CL, I still remember a game against real madrid in 2005 during which real got whipped) ... I don't know if Paris will ever dominate the league that way !

oh man i remember that real madrid game. it wa on my birthday and i was having drinks with friends and i kept being distracted by the game and probably barely spoke a word to my friends. lyon won that one 3-0

great game by Paris yesterday. First half was like a dream. great passing and team play. Motta is back and kicking. and great Pastore. 4-0. 14th Zlatan goal (and he was involved in all 4 goals). Even Gameiro scored (after only 20 seconds on the pitch). ok, it was only Evian but still. if they keep that level and with Matuidi and Verratti back and Lucas Moura in, the second half of the season will be hot !

last night, just like last year, dabo got himself red carded in the st etienne lyon match. and same as last year, lyon ended up winning even though they were one less on the pitch for about half an hour. thanks to bastos who hit a powerful free kick through the wall. and big thanks to ruffier for some poor keeping. which is made great by the fact that a few days ago, the st etienne president had said that in vercoutre lyon had a 2cv, where as with ruffier st etienne had a ferrari.

Ahah. Usually it's lyon's président who says stupid things !
it seems the title will be between Lyon and Paris... Fight !

Because, though they have as many points as Paris, lol Marseille obviously (they lost 3-0 to Lorient after losing 4-1 to Lyon, both at home).

ha yeah marseille had a surprising start to the season but there was no way they'd be able to keep it up all the way, especially considering how shitty their bench is. lyon and paris indeed. and they play against each other on sunday, should be interesting.

Lyon didn't look great from what I saw (the last 15 mins of each half); it looked like St Etienne were better at holding the ball and creating difficult chances, but their finishing was rubbish.

true. then again they were playing a few players out of place. gourcff was playing on the left wing, grenier got injured after about 10-15mn so they brought in fofana to replace him. plus lisandro lopez was out and bastos just came back from injury, umtiti (19yr old) started the game in central defense cos lovren is injured again. and in the second half they were playing with 10men only. but tbh i've seen a couple of other lyon matches where they played a lot more convincingly.

yeah, neither Lyon nor St Etienne were really impressive, to say the least... it was quite a boring game.
but Lyon have had better games, definitely. The one against Marseille was good. although Lyon might be the biggest danger for PSG for the title, it's always good to watch a team humiliate Marseille !

the Paris-Lyon game will be very interesting and exciting indeed. if Paris play like they played against Porto and Evian, it will be tough for Lyon, though.

and another 4-0 for Paris against Valenciennes (who hadn't lost any game home this season) !
3 goals for Z.
Paris is burning !

saw the second half only. apparently valenciennes played quite well in the first. but in the second zlatan got two easy goals, psg were fantastic on the counter. getting very worried for lyon this weekend cos now gourcuff is injured (again) too, so they're without either of their creative midfielders (grenier & gourcuff both injured)

yeah, it's so sad/crazy that gourcuff is injured againafter like 2 games !?

umtiti is a great name

PSG/Lyon eded up a bit of a disappointing game I thought. Still keeps things v exciting at the top although my beloved (well this season anyway) St Etienne are in a state of collapse.

Montpellier have started to slowly wake up and quite the goal by Estrada at the weekend.

so pissed off about psg lyon, i stayed up till 4am to watch it and then my internet didn't work at all so couldn't stream it. which might be a good thing cos as you say it apparently wasn't very good. not really a surprise since lyon has struggled whenever they've had to play without one of grenier or gourcuff.

The Swedish Language Council have officially introduced a new word: “Zlatanera” – which in English means “to clear anything with force” or “to dominate.”

The verb, essentially “to Zlatan” (“Zlataner”), has been in common use by Swedes for a few months now.

this is a ligue 2 match but this goal is quite nice so i thought i'd put it here. also, gives everyone a chance to get used to future ligue 1 team monaco's extremely empty stadium.
http://youtu.be/GisWWusysYg?t=1m24s

lol where did that come from?! The rest of that clip is high comedy

Yeah Monaco is kind of sad to see. I'm watching nice Bordeaux right now and nice had a beautiful move that ended on the crossbar. Could have been a goal of the year contender had it gone in.

you can expect a gif from this ajaccio lyon match to pop up on the internet soon enough. ball is going out, lovren is running after it and the sideline ref raises the flag straight into lovren's face.

So Bastos off to Schalke on 18 month loan? I know you've said he was inconsistent Jibe but I'd have thought he was a more than useful option to have in the squad if Lyon are serious about winning the league this year.

yeah but sadly lyon is on a permanent firesale, it's horrible. i'd much rather have kept him than send him on an 18 month loan (which i'll admit is the first time i've ever seen something like it). they also tried to sell briand to monaco, who're playing in ligue 2. when that didn't happen, they put out an official statement regretting briand's decision to stay in lyon which is really poor management. meanwhile, their wingers are lacazette, age 22 or thereabouts and ghezzal, age 19. i don't know what's happening but every transfer period makes for bad surprises. this summer one of lisandro or gomis will leave, gourcuff prob too, and unless réveillère accepts a much lower salary he's probably out too. financially it's all gone to sht.

in the meantime, i've just watched lyon lose 3-1 to ajaccio. they were leading 1-0 then ajaccio scored 2 almost right after. in the 88th gomis had a penalty stopped by ochoa, then in extra time ajaccio got a penalty too, that mutu scored. so lyon lose 3-1. i'll add that unless i'm mistaken they got that penalty after an offside player was brought down by lovren who got red carded. i really don't see lyon being able to hold their own against psg. their third substitution was a 17yr old from their academy, which, well, good for him, but also shows the lack of depth lyon have.

why has this happened at lyon? massive wages/add-ons for pedestrian players?

Mutu! The only other time I've seen a statement of regret at a player staying was with somebody at Rangers, which isn't a good precedent. Maybe Mancini said something similar about Wayne Bridge actually.

well, i'd say lyon is still reeling from their insane buying sprees of a few years ago. at some point any halfway decent dude playing at lille was bound to be bought for big bucks by lyon. most of them turned out to be shit (kader keita, bodmer). there was also that summer where they spent 80M€ (lisandro, cissokho, gourcuff), the thing being that they bought them for a lot more than actual market value, at a time when no one had any money. this was during the summer of 2008, when they ended up in the top 3 spenders in europe or something like that. they used to be good at negotiating and that summer was almost like they'd offer 5M more than what the other team was asking (15M€ for cissokho?!?!). add to this the fact that all those expensive players were paid very well, that all the players who'd been there for a while kept getting raises everytime their contract was renewed... i think their wage bill was around 70% of their budget. i'm not sure but i also think that all this is because they are trying to build a new stadium (they've been trying for the past 6-7 years). they'd raised money for it a long time back and used it to buy players at exorbitant prices and now that the stadium actually seems like it might happen, they need to get some of that money back.

I was wondering if Beckham was even playing, I hadn't heard his name since I switched on, when lo! he plays in Menez to hammer home (via the defender) to wrap up a 2-0 win.

zlatans knee...

It was the other quintessential Beckham play too - that stampy, clenched-fist thing, pre-empting a challenge, where the ball squirts off the outside of his foot. Still got it.

I watched it in a bar and everybody cheered whenever Beckham was on screen (and when he got in, of course).
it was half ironically but still, pretty fun !
and it's always good to whip Marseille and be number 1 : Paris is magic !

Kinda of bizarre seeing Beckham pulling off shit like that in such a high level game again. I no longer think of him as a footballer at all, it's always felt like his time in the MLS was basically equivalent to playing Masters.

That was lovely stuff though, if he can do that another 4 or 5 times before the end of the season they'll have already got everything they've got any right to expect from him in a footballing capacity.

pathetic game from PSG - my enthusiasm for this team is really fading. I hope they'll find the motivation to put in some effort for the CL.

well, if you lose your enthusiasm for the team now, I wonder how you kept it during the last ten years !

low expectations means low disappointment! With what they have at their dispoal, i'm just shocked how boring and lifeless this team feels.

it wasn't a great game but, for instance, how often in ligue 1 do you see such beautiful passing as the two Pastore did yesterday !

Arnaud, with who I watched the game, said Lavezzi's useless raids reminded him of... the mighty bernard mendy !

yes i did admire some of Pastore's loooong passing but then systematically I would also wonder why Paris - given the supposed quality of their midfield - fell so low as to rely on cheap kick 'n rush, hoping somebody upfront would figure out what to do with Pastore's ball.

Thought PSG were p garbage for the 2nd half. First was okay tho.

first 15 mins were OK - but after going up 1-0, PSG started defending like a terrorised relegation candidate, relying on crappy counter-attacks. It sure didnt feel like you were watching the leader playing at home

frankly, if Lavezzi had finished his raids better, it could have been 3 or 4-0, easily (OK, OM could have scored too).
anyway, not saying it was Paris at their best (but they've had great games, even recently, so...).

saw the last 15m and paris had a dreadful sort of lassitude about them but it was snowing and windy

vs valencia they were rather more impressive though

xp apart from CL, I don't think I've seen a good Paris game since the start of the year - actually, I can probably count on one hand the number of good games I've seen from this team this season (and all the 4-0s against relegation teams were generally not part of these)

I don't have all the games in mind but I remember many moments of individual or team combinations greatness since the start of the season.
basically, since the 4-4-2 and the victories run after the "november crisis" they have been pretty good.
I haven't watched many games since the beginning of 2013, though. and the one against sochaux was VERY bad.

haha comparing lavezzi to mendy, that's beautiful. without a doubt one of the greatest compliments, coming from certain psg fans.
as for the way they play, i haven't seen that many games, but from what i hear, it sounds like they don't give much of a fuck in ligue 1, whereas in the champions league they are far more focused?
also, any oopinions on the logo change?
and i'm sure sunday's game was horribly filmed by canal, with far too many cuts to beckham, even while the game was going on?

and i'm sure sunday's game was horribly filmed by canal, with far too many cuts to beckham, even while the game was going on?

for french reading ilxors : http://www.liberation.fr/sports/2013/02/26/psg-om-sur-canal-est-ce-encore-du-foot_884659
it was pretty intense. like close ups on him everytime he moved an eyelash... but it was fun !

regarding the logo, many complain but I find it nice and don't have any problem with the change.
as for the team, some games they're a bit off but there have been great moments/games.
thing is, they might not focus on every/all games. but who could blame them since with what they've done so far : 1st of league, best attack, best defence, top scorer of the league...

the thing that makes me laugh is OM's goal average at this point of the season... +1 !! (while PSG have +33...).

New logo is fine. No big deal although I'm a bit worried they're changing the color to a lighter shade of blue, which would suck since the current dark blue is pretty badass

woah that article. it is interesting cos it helped me figure out what was bothering me when i watch streams of french games from canal compared to the epl or whatever that i can watch on tv. now i know that that strange feeling was the incessant slo-mo replays, cuts and so on. i hate how often they use those things especially since it's happened quite a few times that while they show a replay the game is going on - including goal chances. so then later on they'd show a replay of the goal chance tht we'd missed because they were showing a replay at that moment...
as for the logo, it's ok yeah, i was expectiing far worse, especially after that fake a few weeks back where the blue was similar to that of the om jersey. the only worrying thing is that the paris bit is made far bigger than the st germain, feels like in a few years they'll just try and get rid of the St germain.

Saint Germain is the coolest thing about the club imo. Anyway, the mighty Paris FC have that name, so they can't do that. (I was looking the history up earlier - seems PSG was formed by a merger between Paris FC and somebody else, only for Paris FC to split and reform even before PSG had been formed? That's some excellent factionalism!)

yeah, for a while I had a soft spot for PFC as the real paris club and had regular talks with old guys in bars in my neighborhood for who the only paris club was PFC.
but they're pretty lousy and one really have to not care about results and showlights to support them !
by the way, regarding the logo, in that case, for those who are all "tradition and origins", it should be Paris-Saint Germain-en-Laye, not just Saint Germain which was already a simplification of the city's name !

regarding canal plus, yeah, it can be quite irritating sometimes. especially the statistics and figures, for me... they're all like experts/specialists/scientists... that's one thing I liked about thierry rolland : he was full of shit but didn't pretend otherwise and was just small talking/joking during the games !

ismael, you very well know the qatari could buy up PFc just to get the name back !
also AlXTC, i know it should be st germain en laye (i took the rerA in that direction so many times it'd be hard not to) but that would just be too long. also, with it just being st germain it introduces a kind of doubt - i have a few friends abroad who've asked me if the st germain was something to do with st germain des prés, which i find really entertaining.

ahah, I had the idea, last year, to find a chinese investor to buy up PFC (since they play in the 13th) !
it was at the time when shanghai bought anelka, drogba... things have changed since then !
as for st germain des près, yup, that would have been better than en laye... but still, as paris saint germain is already shorter for saint germain des pres, why not remove the saint germain part too and focus on the reality : it's all about paris !

Tussle between Joey Barton and Ibrahimovic ends with Barton mocking Zlatan for having a big nose; great stuff lads

http://farm9.staticflickr.com/8088/8513256069_6297d8ba91_o.gif

Same game same score but completely different display from Paris

and Beckham (almost) got into a fight !
but he decided to rearrange his hairdo instead.
wiseman.

and 4-0 against marseille over the 2 games... sweet !

still mesmerized by this gif

Barton can be happy he didn't die right after that !

(Zlatan's had pretty rough "contacts" with other players since the start of the season...)

That's nothing, the Corsican derby today had four red cards in injury time, in at least two separate incidents (on top of another one just before the end of normal time)

not really helping corsican teams' reputation. also, another red card for a terrible tackle by valentin eysseric on jérémy clément in the nice-st etienne game, resulting in an open leg fracture.

Watching Brest Lyon rn and I've rarely seen such a bad pitch in a pro game.

Only just caught up on the weeken's highlights. Lol at PSG losing 1-0 to the team at the bottom of the table, extra lol at it being 0-0 when the opposition went down to ten men.

That tackle in the St Etienne game was absolutely horrific, lovely to see the super front free of Etienne all scoring. Marseille left it a little late before getting their win.

Some of the pitches were indeed terrible. Lopez was shockingly bad for your guys Jibe.

lopez is sulking because he's playing on the left wing. he's probably leaving this summer. well whichever of gomis or him is sold first. but tbh they were both bad this weekend, wasting good chances. gomis had one absolutely incredible moment where he shot the ball and actually sent it over the roof and outside the stadium...
http://twitpic.com/c8y77m

Haha! Is he sponsored by Breizh Cola?

not breton enough, but he should ask them for a few complimentary cans of breizh cola

https://sphotos-b.xx.fbcdn.net/hphotos-prn1/31933_10151314507602466_2058228541_n.jpg

ha nice one

in other ligue 1 news, last weekend was absolutely amazing as most of the teams at the top of the table failed to win. it was almost like none of them wanted to grab points - lyon lost to bastia, nice to nancy, marseille drew with ajaccio, lille lost to evian and st etienne and psg parted with a tied score. only one team in the top 10 won (lorient, 10th).

"The race for second place" - should be the title for next season's EPL thread

i realised a few weeks after creating this thread, when searching for it, that it was the second sports thread with that name, the first one being about the tour de france a year or two earlier. i'm all for it being a thread title that ends up being used for different sport competitions (the scottish premier league could probably use it too i guess)

How much of a threat are Monaco going to be next season?

What's going on with them? Any big signings? Last thing I saw was talk of Mourinho, though Mancini seems much more likely - I find it hard to believe City are going to stick with him.

I note Nantes are coming back up with them. There are quite a few wounded giants in French footy, nice to get a couple coming back.

No one really knows. It will depend on the financial/fiscal rules, for instance ! (because until now Monaco didn't have to pay the same taxes as the rest of the clubs since they're not in France...)
I don't think they will be huge and a real threat for Paris on their first season back. Especially since Paris will certainly be stronger by next season. but I suppose they will fight against Lille, OM, OL, St Etienne, etc for the other CL spots !

ya alxtc has it about right. there are rumours about which players they'll be chasing this offseason but nothing very serious, then there's that tax issue which has popped up recently and has painted monaco as being the bad guys (part of me wants to believe that story was pushed to the media by psg so they could pass the mantle of bad guys to monaco).
nantes coming back up is good too, they def are one of the historical giants of french football. ligue 2 was filled with them: nantes, monaco, auxerre, lens, le havre (metz and strasbourg used to be there not long ago too, they've plunged even further).

so this thread has gone real quiet - I guess most people think the title is already won for PSG, there's still a pretty intense race for CL spots. I don't particularly care for Lyon but I think in the bigger picture it would be good for French football to reverse their decline - and they will really need to qualify for CL next year for that to happen

Really impressed at how Nancy have turned things around over the last few weeks. They looked out of it not long ago.

And what happened to Rennes? Saw the Troyes match yesterday and they looked hopeless. Their record over the last ten games is drawn two, lost eight.

rennes is doing typical rennes things. look good when the season starts, play up to your role of CL spots challenger and then with the season coming to an end become inexplicably shit. i think if you were to check back the previous ligue 1 threads, you'd see me mention this everytime !
and boo baaderonixx for not caring for lyon, booo. but yeah they need to be in the cl.

ha, look at what i'd posted in the first message of this thread :

rennes will show good things early on and then falter and tumble down the table to their usual 5-6th spot

was wrong about their spot, spot on about what would happen though.

oh also this weekend saw st etienne win their first title in 30 something years. in the great showdown between teams that hadn't won in forever (for rennes its 40 something years and counting iirc), les verts came through. admittedly it's the shittiest trophy you can win in france, the coupe de la ligue, but when it's been that long i'm sure you dgaf (see marseille in recent times). they can thank brandao who scored the winning goal for them and who has still not a single match in the coupe de la ligue, winning it twice with marseille and not st etienne.

The main problem for OL is to have a good mercato... and get rid of Gourcuff !
OM, somehow might finish 2nd which is pure miracle for them (I mean, they're 2nd of the league with +5 goal average, 5 games from the end of the season !).

sorry JB for Lyon - I mean I have no partic attachment to that club but I don't dislike them either. The main thing is that unlike all the other L1 clubs, I'm sure Lyon could get back to their status of a consistent contender, which would make the league more exciting and would mean a more serious French contingent in Europe. Getting back to CL next year tho seems key to stop their financial hemorrage - but you would know much more about this than I do.

ha, no worries, i wasn't srs and i totally get not caring about lyon (and hey at least you're not actively hating them like so many were not long ago when they dominated the league). but yeah psg + lyon back at a decent level and soon enough prob monaco too could make for good french football in europe. brng back the glory days of the 90s all that.

Lyon clearly do need the CL financially. they're still reeling from all the terrible choices they made in 2008, the huge contracts and massive amounts spent like there was no tomorrow. this summer, lisandro or gomis (or both) will leave, gourcuff might too as alxtc says. if that's the case they won't have a lot of big salaries on the roster anymore (réveillère is in negotiations with them right now and you acn be sure he's being asked to agree on a lower salary), they'll have a lot of young players gaining experience - i was just looking at their roster and it's kind of crazy to see how many players born in the 90s they have - and their youth academy is still doing quite well.

Beckham sent off five minutes after being subbed on! PSG down to nine but still look like holding on.

What did he do? I've seen him pick up a couple of stupid bookings for mouthing off.

Bad tackle, straight red. Harsh tbf.

i caught a replay of the match and that tackle is worthy of a red. keep in mind you're watching ligue 1, not the epl, and dangerous tackles are dealt with harshly - see eysseric's 11 match (iirc) ban for breaking clément's leg a bit earlier this season. in beckham's case, he came studs up and seemed to really go for it and kick, luckily for him the evian player stopped dead in his tracks otherwise he could prob have said goodbye to his leg. so yeah, for ligue 1 this is not a harsh red, it's a deserved one. in the pl yes that would have been a harsh red but then again you can break legs and not get carded for it there !

hahaha domenech chimes in on the backham tackle with the following quote: "For me, it's a violent attack. Ok, everyone says he didn't touch him. It's good that he missed him. As a specialist in dangerous tackles, I will say this: when you put your foot above the ball and at your opponent's knee level, it's not to take the ball. It's a message to your opponent : if you dare put a part of your body there, i'll take it off"

seriously now that he's not coaching france anymore, he's become extremely enjoyable. makes for good quotes. has shown repeately he doesn't take himself too seriously. that comment about him being an expert in dangerous tackles is a callback to his own career as a player, when he was known as "the butcher". and it's always good to talk of him just to get the chance to post this great pic of him in his playing days.
http://www.whoateallthepies.tv/Domenechtash.jpg

http://www.lfchistory.net/images/profiles/player_souness.jpg

so many similarities

the incredibly precise match between the moustaches is remarkable. i wonder if frank zappa spent his spare time going around knobbling the shins of poor unsuspecting saps.

congrats to psg for finally winning it. kind of sad it came at the expense of my team this weekend but whatevs.
also, would like to take a moment to post the following goal from this weekend's games, insane lob from evian thonon gaillard' saber khlifa:
http://youtu.be/8hP5Wxlx2Pw?t=1m9s

That is ridiculous

they were up three nil at that point so he prob thought he could get away with anything.

PARISIENS ET CHAMPIONS !
so good...
and I have to say it was even better to win against and at Lyon (sorry Jibé).
I'm a bit hungover today but it was worth it !

http://www.sofoot.com/IMG/img-zlatan-ibrahimovic-psg-1368441093_620_400_crop_articles-169542.jpg

Need that shirt. I wonder if they'll sell it spelt in the singular: parisien ET champion

ahah. everything is possible : rêvons plus grand !

enjoy the first of possibly many titles, alxtc and baaderonixx !
also.... hahahaha i didn't stay up till the end of the game so did not get a chance to admire the beautiful trolling at work with that tshirt. parisiens et champions, that's amazing. there's no way ppl aren't complaining about it right?
xp: i want one for me that says parisien et pas champion :'(

"Parisien, Ilxor ET champion"

image macro idea: pic of agaricus bisporus w/ text "parisien et champignon". if you can find one that looks like ibrahimovic you hit the jackpot

you mean "champignon de paris"

that's what i am referring to, it's not what i mean

btw - they also got the domain:
http://parisiensetchampions.psg.fr/

champions !
http://www.psg.fr/fr/PSGTV/800102/Video/7751/Mamadou-Sakho-presente-les-champions
and celebrating tonight at Trocadero and on all Paris bridges !

Félicitations!

riots at trocadero at the moment and CRS vans passing in front of my place at full speed to get there : Paris will always be Paris !

http://i.imgur.com/PFDiBjX.jpg

L'Equipe saying Tevez and Falcao are off to Monaco

Tevez will be closer to his relatives at least a little bit amirite?

I hope Monaco (and maybe some others) will have big names next year to keep things interesting and exciting for everybody.
it was so silly the panic due to the celebration yesterday. Hoepefully it will be quieter next year !

http://www.guardian.co.uk/football/2013/may/18/monaco-french-courts-tax

there's no way the lfp can win this right?

no probably not. asking for a one-time payment of 200M€ is such a farce tho and would def make for some "hilarious" conspiracy talk every time monaco get a single dodgy call going their way.
the three clubs coming up from ligue 2 next season will be monaco, nantes and guinguamp. it's good to see 2 of the most titled and storied clubs come back to ligue 1. as for guingamp, they're a tiny club from a tiny city that sometimes shows up in ligue 1. they are famous for winning the coupe de france in 2009 against rennes when they were still a ligue 2 club (rennes truly are capable of fucking up everything they do - this, their ligue 1 campaigns every year, this year's coupe de la ligue final), being the club where drogba & malouda became famous and previously being owned by Noël Le Graët, the current French Football Federation president.

I'm always amazed at how these little anonymous places can support top-level French clubs. I've never heard of Guingamp, Sochaux, Troyes or Valenciennes for any other reason. Maybe it's the same here, idk - are Stoke, Reading, West Bromwich and Sunderland completely unknown outside the UK?

Even then these are all big places - Guingamp's population appears to be less than half the size of its stadium.

i started writing that the places you named were bigger cities than guingamp, but then i decided to check and it turns out the population of sochaux is less than that of guingamp. but that one is a special case, they have peugeot factories and there's a historical link between peugeot and the club that helped it make its place in ligue 1. valenciennes and troyes have populations of 50k and 70k, so not huge cities, but big enough.
tbh in that list of english cities you've given, were it not for football, i'd have no clue about places like stoke, west bromwich or sunderland (reading i know because of a music festival there).

So PSG end up winning the title (big surprise there) with zlatan scoring 30 goals - first time in ligue 1 since JPP (that's jean-pierre papin to all you non-french, non-guignols de l'info watching people). their game against lorient was also ludovic giuly's last one as he's retiring. as was ronan le crom, psg's 4th goalkeeper, who subbed in for areola (psg's 3rd keeper) during the game. he then got a red card which meant that for the last 10mns, psg had defender mamadou sakho in the goals. quite an entertaining way to cap off a season!

marseille came in to this last day of play knowing they would finish in second place whatever happened. this is quite a surprise when you consider they didn't have much of a bench. they did have a few class players, - mandanda, nkoulou, valbuena -, that kept them in the race almost all season. in the battle for european spots, lyon won and kept their third place so they'll go to the champion's league. 14th time placing in the top 3 in 15 years, woot ! lisandro lopez scored and made huge hugging signs to the stands, so that probably means that he is leaving for sure. well, that plus his tears at the end of the game. surprise of the season nice end up in 4th place, so they get the europa league spot. claude puel took this team from the bottom of the table to quite an impressive finish, behind joint 2nd best ligue 1 scorer cvitanich - bound to show up in transfer rumours. which is the fate of aubameyang, with whom he's tied, for st etienne. they had a great season, finishing 5th and winning the league cup. they will play in the europa league too.

lille did their usual "reverse rennes", meaning bad start to the season and then great second half but it wasn't enough to grab a european spot. first time in 4 or 5 years they'll be missing europe. might give them a chance to be more competitive in ligue 1 from the start of next season, rather than a few months in. bordeaux is 7th and they'll be playing the coupe de france final this saturday against evian thonon gaillard. last year's champions, montpellier, end up in 9th place.

the three teams to go down are brest, nancy and troyes. for the first two, this was known before the last day of play. troyes had a small chance of staying up but they lost their game. they have a coach who gave an interview a while back saying he'd rather lose and play attractive football than win ugly iirc. i guess his wish came true.

Nice finished fourth? I was reading a long piece yesterday saying the fight for third was between Lyon, St Etienne and Lille.

Assuming Monaco now leap up towards PSG, what prospects of a third team challenging at the top? Would it require an oligarch to buy Marseille, Lyon or Bordeaux? Any prospect of that happening, or are you going to be another two-team league?

before the day's play, lyon was on 64 pts, St etienne 62, nice and lille 61. the reason why nice wasn't mentioned in the race for third place is that their goal difference was not good enough to have a chance to overtake lyon. meanwhile lille and st etienne were playing each other on the last day. their goal difference was somewhat similar to lyon's so depending on who won, and if lyon had lost, they might have ended up in 3rd spot. but they drew, while nice won, so nice ends up in 4th.

monaco is definitely leaping up towards psg. they've already spent more money in this offseason than any other french club bar psg has spent in the last two ! as of today, it doesn't look like any other club will be taken over by an oligarch. every so often you hear about how marseille might be sold to some billionaire, especially since the club belongs *gasp* to a woman. but margarita louis-dreyfus has repeatedly said she wants to keep the club and intends to run it. aulas has been a few times to the middle east and every time he does, rumours abound that he's looking for some rich oil/gas sheikh to take over, but i don't think that's going to happen. as for bordeaux, i've not heard a single rumour about them so who knows. their owners are notoriously skint so who knows what would happend if they were ever offered a good price.

but, tbh, i think that while monaco and psg will probably dominate the league, marseille lyon lille still have a chance of challenging at the top. if you look at this season, marseille and lyon had about as much money to spend in the offseason as i have in my bank account. both teams are actively trying to curtail their spending right now. and yet, lyon was tied for first with psg at the halfway mark, marseille were only a couple points away from psg for most of the second half of the season. in the case of lyon, and this may be wishful thinking on my part as a lyon fan, i think that in a couple of years, after their new stadium is built and they've played with their youth academy players for a while to give them a chance to become more experienced, thus giving them some time to clean up their finances, they probably will be able to compete with the big2.

great posts jibe!

what of the players who hae carried a bit of transfer rumour buzz over the past couple seasons - ayew, belhanda, grenier etc.?

Thanks for this Jibe, great posts indeed!

glad you enjoyed them.
as for the players with transfer rumour buzz... ayew (you're talking about the andré, rather than jordan, obv) hasn't been too much in transfer rumours. oh wait no, he has been linked to arsenal, but then again if you're a young player with even a bit of success in ligue 1, you will without a doubt be associated to arsenal at some point. he's had an ok to good season - one of the better players for om, though still a level or two below mandanda, nkoulou, valbuena. tbh i'm not really sure where he might go. he's not good/consistent enough to warrant a trade to a big team, he prob might stay in marseille unless they get a good offer for him (say anything over 12M€). as i said the other day, marseille has no money, like most french clubs, so they'll sell to buy.

belhanda had a good season. his numbers aren't as good as last season's but last season was an outlier for every one in montpellier. and this season he had to make do without giroud upfront, who was replaced by far less threatening forwards, so more focus was put on belhanda. i had him in my fantasy football league and got mad a couple of times for ex a couple months ago, he took a penalty and decided to try a panenka... it was stopped by the keeper. considering the fact that his contract ends next year, he'll probably leave this summer. at some point in time he was also rumoured to go to arsenal. most of montpellier's main players from their title season are slowly leaving - giroud last summer, yanga mbiwa this winter, prob belhanda this summer.

grenier has been tragically inconsistent too. he and gourcuff spent most of the season being injured, usually one would replace the other on the injured list. he's spent a lot of games making the wrong choices, trying impossible things rather than simpler, better options etc. but, he also usually managed to shine in one way or another. take his last 5 games for example. i don't think a single lyon fan would tell you he played well and in a consistent manner, yet he also scored a cracking volley at the last second for a win against montpellier, and two fabulous free-kicks in the last 2 games. if i were him, i'd stay for a year more in lyon to work on my consistency rather than go to a big club and spend time on the bench. aulas declared this weekend that grenier "is 37M€, no less". lol@aulas and his usual BS. they have to renegotiate his contract, hopefully he'll likely stay unless a good offer comes - something you'll basically hear about most players in ligue 1. oh, can you guess to which club he's most been linked? i'll give you one guess.

the french press are really lazy when it comes to creating transfer rumours is the main take away from all this.

i was starting to write pages about transfer prospects from evevry single team in ligue 1 but then i realised this message was already tl;dr. i might do that another time if i'm still not very busy at work.

after moutinho and rodriguez and with falcao and others to come, Monaco are likely to have a great team next year.
as a parisian, I'm looking forward to this exciting season !

should be exciting, but i don't think monaco, regardless of who they get this offseason, will be able to compete with psg. they're changing half of their team at least so it'll take a year, would be my guess, before they challenge psg for top spot. but yeah, next season should be exciting anyways. and as a parisian i'm looking forward to being able to see great football at the parc whenever i'm back home.

it's also good because it will take some pressure off paris. they won't be the only team all the others will want to beat.
it's kinda weird how, except for CR7, there have been no serious transfer rumours about paris so far...

i was starting to write pages about transfer prospects from evevry single team in ligue 1 but then i realised this message was already tl;dr. i might do that another time if i'm still not very busy at work.

No pressure Jibe, but I'd read this for sure. Minor bits of insight into other leagues is a foundation of my affection for ILF

How is Rybolovlev seen in the French media? Is there much interest in his dubious past?

Can France afford to shun them?

What happens if Ligue 1 doesn't back down and allow Monaco in? They could make all these great players spend a year playing the Cosmos or Team Bath. Maybe the Washington Diplomats.

Washington Generals, dammit

This is the thread for unusual details in wikipedia articles.

ok windsor davies... i've started on this. warning: it's really really long.
for each club, i'll mention a player or two who's going to be in the news and transfer rumours. i'm doing this at work between other things so some of it might be incoherent or just not interesting at all. some of the names you'll prob have heard of, others maybe not. in some cases it might be that the players i mention won't even be traded by their teams at all (though considering the financial position most french clubs are in, if you come at them with a good enough offer, usually meaning anything above 10-12M€, they'll pack the player's bag for him). anyways, i've started this but think it might be a bit too much if i do all clubs at once, so here it is for the top 10 clubs...

psg:
gameiro - needs play time else where. was in the spotlight previously while playing for lorient. transferred to psg just dayss before they were acquired by qatari sheikh, who, tbh, were looking for players a class above him. he's a quick player, who breaks for runs in the defense's back. he scored at an ok rate with the scraps of matches he got here and there. scored two on the last day against lorient, where he got a warm ovation.
sakho - all year long, there have been rumours about him wanting to leave because ancelotti played alex rather than him along side thiago silva. there will keep being rumours, but there is no way he is leaving psg for a few reasons. he counts as a home grown player (with chantôme too, possibly rabiot coming back from his loan at toulouse), he's a fan favourite, he's also a very promising defender (who can play gk as we saw on the last day) and hopfully in a few years he'll be presented as psg's maldini or something.

marseille:
ayew - mentioned him before.
nkoulou - damn good defender. few rumours sending him to barcelona. marseille would be crazy to let him go but they are strapped for cash (like most ligue 1 teams) so they might pack his bags for him were they to receive a very good offer.
valbuena - more or less in the same situation as nkoulou.

lyon:
the entire team is for sale if the price is right, is more o less aulas' philosophy. amongst the names most rumoured to be leaving, lisandro, gourcuff, gonalons (would be insane to let him go, as lyon have no back up d-mid), lovren, briand, réveillère. can't really write about all of those, i'll just say that a couple weeks ago, some spanish sports newspaper (marca maybe?) had a poll to ask who barcelona should purchase to fill in the gap in defense. hummels was the runaway favourite until a bunch of french websites got in on it and pushed lovren to the top of that list. kind of hilarious to read the comments in very poor spanish, as well as the ones written in proper spanish (so possibly barca fans?) expounding the qualities of lovren and how barca should def consider him. réveillère and gourcuff might stay if they agree to lower salaries, lisandro is almost certtainly leaving considering his reactions during the last game. gomis might leave too and then lyon would have ot depend on its academy players (lacazette, benzia, martial).

nice:
cvitanich - joint top scorer with aubameyang, came from ajax for cheap, probably the best purchase of the previous offseason (only 1.5M€). argentine, with dual citizenship with croatia. wily player who is very good at provoking penalties (that's the nicer way of putting it). my guess is he'll stay with nice to play the europa league but tbh good players rarely stay for long in ligue 1 so if a good club in a bigger league contacts him he'll prob want to leave. he could fetch a good price seeing as he still has 2 years left on his contract.
other names you might hear about: bauthéac, maybe eysseric (he who got a 10 match ban for breaking another player's leg)

St-etienne:
aubameyang - joint top scorer with cvitanich. his second half of the season was not as good as the first. fast player who runs behind the defense (kind of like gameiro). i sas more of him during the second half when he was sometimes a bit clumsy in front of goal, but overall a good player.
other names: guilavogui

lille:
payet - one of lille's best players this season, he has a double-double (more than 10 goals & 10 assists). plays on the right wing.
chedjou - central defender. some rumours are sending him to monaco, others to galatasaray?!?!

bordeaux:
trémoulinas - at the end of every season you hear that some clubs are interested in trémoulinas, yet at the start of every season he is still at bordeaux. could this summer be the one where he finally leaves? he's a good left back, who loves to come up the field.

lorient:
aliadière - finished with 14 goals, good enough for fifth best. he's bound to leave somewhere else this offseason. considering the fact he's 30 he'll go a for a big paycheck so you might see him end up in england?
ecuele manga - good defender, think he took over from koscielny at the spot and is doing quite well.
traoré - plays attacking midfield. scored a few goals from outside the box, truly a good cunter of the ball. problem is he spent quite a bit of the season injured.

montpellier:
belhanda - see above
cabella - another attacking midfield, played mostly on the right wing i think. but montpellier are prob only gonna let one of the two go, and it's bound to be belhanda. cabella might show up in some rumours but he's staying is my guess.

toulouse:
capoue - def midfield. he and sissoko were two of the most lusted after d-mid in ligue 1 for the past few years. sissoko left to newcastle this winter but to me capoue is the better of the two. every summer sadran says he's not leaving until he receives an extremely good offer. this summer will be the same, but at some point he'll probably let him go. he'll prob end up in england.
ben yedder - young center forward, plays for the france u21 team and was among the bunch that made some noise when they decided to go party between two crucial qualification games against norway in october. up till that moment he was having a very good season, scoring 6 in 8 games. after being in the news for his antics, he kind of lost his confidence. he seems to have gotten it back as he ended up with 15 goals, tied for fifth with aliadière.

lucas digne at lille gets linked a lot in the brit press

arsenal swapping gervinho and cash for gonalons is a popular one too

serge aurier?

also zouma, fofana, tabanou (lol sorry i'm not trying to be a dick here)

whats the scoop on yaya sanago btw

haha, i thought about adding digne, aurier & zouma. but tbh i'm doing this at work and i make no claims about having all the names. as for fofana, which one are you talking about? if it's the lyon one, he hasn't played all that much this season and his status depends a bit on what happens to gonalons. if lyon sell gonalons for gervinho + cash, i'll eat my shoe herzog-style (not really)... lyon got burned enough buying lille players and seriously trading gonalons aka the player who played most for lyon this season and has no backup (maybe fofana) for a winger who hasn't played all that much and has mostly been shit sounds like a shit deal.

i didn't mention lucas digne because he started playing for lille only this season and i can't see them letting half of their defence leave all at once. chedjou's been here longer so earned the right to leave & btw apparently chedjou to galatasaray is done so they ought to keep digne.
zouma is still quite young. he should not leave st etienne. aurier might leave but he's also one of the younger players on that squad and there are other players that should be allowed to leave before he is (capoue, tabanou as you rightly said, rabiot leaving back to psg). as for yaya sanogo, don't know much about him cos he played in ligue 2 and it's already hard enough for me to keep up with ligue 1 from abroad.

remember watching some clips of tremoulinas last summer (sigh) when he was linked with qpr, the wee man looked a very fun player

i would hope there's still enough money in french football to take barton and mbia back off our hands

tremoulinas is indeed quite the entertaining player.
as for your second statement. barton seems to enjoy himself in france, he's gotten into a few twitter clashes with french football celebrities and seems to be taking a liking to life in marseille. don't know if marseille really want to keep him as he's been ok but not really amazing. btw the other day, when asked which player in ligue 1 most impressed him, he said toulouse's rabiot, an 18yr old left footed kid on loan from psg.
as for mbia, how can you even think of sending him back. the man is a true genius, always good for some memorable quotes and great antics. as for on-the-field, well um yeah ok. he was quite good at mrseeille, just had a tendency to try extremely risky moves at the worst of times - i seem to remember him trying a coup du sombrero (dammit don't know the name in english - basically you kick the ball above a player's head and retrieve on the other side) against a forward in his own box. makes for entertaining times !

lol i'm not sure the english would have a word for such sorcery

mbia did seem entertaining at first but unfortunately qpr is where eccentrics go to die

thanks jibe

aubemayang is impressive, reminds me of a young torres

The English for everything fancy is 'flick'.

Rabiot is an ILF guy-to-watch iirc. I half-expected Barton to pitch up at Napoli next, in a tour of disreputable port cities, before ending his career in a knife brawl at Feyenoord. I doubt Rafa'd have him though.

i eventually remembered that 'fannydangle' was le mot juste