VSt is probably being too optimistic, or completely misguided, to perceive at the start of the 2020-2021 season the signs of an improvement in the quality of football offered by Ligue 1. It is also to face a wall of skepticism, so much it is de rigueur to denigrate it.
To overcome the a priori and feel a thrill, it was better to avoid the posters of recent weekends, with big teams – PSG, OL and OM – who have not really justified their status, nor the record amount of new rights distribution (more than one billion euros annually).
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Following in the ideas
However, where the playing options of Thomas Tuchel, André Villas-Boas and Rudi Garcia appear nebulous or insufficient for such numbers, Julien Stéphan gives a follow-up to his. Stade Rennes appears in a position to consolidate its progress, supported by high-performance training, and to pursue a sustainable sports project.
Claude Puel takes the risk in Saint-Étienne of launching very young players, less to improve their market value than to make them play together without complexes. If ASSE is forced to do so by the need to relieve a few large salaries, this does not prevent sporting betting on talents.
We also see Brest intelligently constructing its actions under the direction of Olivier Dall’Oglio, Monaco finally starting to show collective coherence, Lille, Nice and Nîmes offering elaborate measures. Among these, the tactical intentions are visible, albeit with varying degrees of success.
A dozen clubs aiming for the top 5 of the championship, it is not the least imaginative who will succeed. Puel and Stéphan have in common to claim the direction of the sports field, to remedy the precariousness of their profession and sports policies by having the keys to the game.
Posing the game rather than its manly attributes
Even FC Metz came to play at the Vélodrome with ideas on Saturday, September 26, and Reims found theirs by hosting Paris on Sunday evening. The audacity will perhaps pass him, but the promoted Lensois does not arrive in the elite to grab points with a football-percentage.
In the game proposals of French clubs, “We find most of the scorers in modern football: pressing, positional play, system with and without the ball, backward leader”, believes Christophe Kuchly, co-author of Revolutionary Trainers.
It is not particularly revolutionary today to think that playing well allows results to be obtained, that we can put the game on the ground rather than its manly attributes, prefer initiative to boring minimalism. Atalanta Bergamo, RB Leipzig, Leverkusen or Sassuolo show that we can inspire enthusiasm with more sporting ambitions than financial means.
The radical Marcelo Bielsa ignites Leeds with a rise in the elite, but also with love, dramas, disillusions, and still life. So, all eyes are on Leeds and Bergamo, where something is happening, where we remember that football should be steeped in emotions than calculations.
For a common program
Contemporary football places an increased importance on coaches, beyond the stars of the bench. We see the emergence of very young people – like Julian Nagelsmann at Hoffenheim then Leipzig – without a great player background but with a vision, methods and results …
However, we are still waiting for a “school” of French coaches likely to be exported like their Portuguese, Spanish or German counterparts, sensitive to tactical developments, and themselves creative. In order to exceed the team profile in L1 “Athletic, with talents above the rest”, as Hugo Lloris summed it up in an interview with The team.
The new leaders of the Professional Football League are unlikely to plan to think and act in this direction – or even have the mandate and the means to do so.
Let us still dream of a common program to pool technical resources, carry out R&D, ensure continuous training and the detection of coaches, guarantee access to diplomas to the best potential technicians rather than to former players.
It is time to put the solid structures of French football, from the immense base of amateur clubs to institutions of excellence, at the service of a collective ambition. To make the French championship, at least in some of the clubs, a laboratory of the game and no longer just a breeding of players.
