Ligue 1

Re: Ligue 1 - 11/12

I'm impressed with that last post. You obviously know a lot more about this than i do.
You also make some good points. I agree with the fact that it could be better if several clubs have good players instead of one who has too much (as was the case with Lyon, you definitely make a valid point there).

Still, i'm not entirely convinced that what PSG is doing now is better than what Lyon did. French football would fare if there were several clubs like PSG...maybe this can attract other big investors. Then it would be a good thing.

Nevertheless: very good post.
 
Re: Ligue 1 - 11/12

Good points guys. I'm personally for PSG improving the league and buying high quality foreign players into the game.

And OM and Lyon remain big so they will pose threats and clubs like Bordeaux, Lille and Rennes will be there and thereabouts and with right management as has been the case with LOSC over past couple years and Les Girondins before that, can mount a challenge as well. So for me this makes the league more interesting as before the Parisien club was NOT challenging and for years has been underachieving. Now a sleeping giant has been awakened and let's face it, the capital club, one of the best and biggest cities in the world, Paris deserved at least ONE great club. And I believe other investors will perhaps buy clubs like St. Etienne or Nantes who have potential and try to make them more competitive. I think others will follow as it's already happened in Monaco. This can only be a good thing and I don't foresee PSG running away with the league every year just because they now have a rich investor. Many other factors in play and some other capable clubs.

@Edmundo, good points made though it seems to me that you have some personal dislike somehow for OL. So if I may make a small suggestion, I don't know if you're a betting man but if you are, and given the fact that you actually think they are the worst team left in CL (which is I believe what you said before), don't you think you should bet on their match against APOEL? After all APOEL was probably the most impressive team in the group stage of CL this year given their expectations and tough group and topped it while OL struggled to get through and had some real luck on final day and maybe even some controversy.

I was looking at odds right now and this jumped out at me and it reminded me of you so I thought I'd make this suggestion. Currently bookmarkers (or at least Bodog which is what I use) is giving OL 1.44 and 7.0 to APOEL while a draw in France gets 4.3 for every dollar wagered.

Don't you think given your certainty of OL being crap this is worth putting a few quid on and making some $$$? I think it may be.

Those odds are for the match in France of course but it's obvious the bookmakers still see OL as big favourites. Wonder what the odds will be for the match in Cyprus actually. That'll be interesting.
 
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Re: Ligue 1 - 11/12

Eyel3ss said:
Is it ironic??
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Of course it isn't ironic, i really meant it, i was impressed with edmundo's knowledge.

You know what is ironic?

If say you are impressed with somebody's meaning on the internet, that people think you are being ironic, sarcastic. This says a lot about internet forums.
 
Re: Ligue 1 - 11/12

gerd said:
This says a lot about internet forums.
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That is exactly why I asked if it was ironic. Because we don't often have the opportunity to have such good discussions in a forum about football nowadays.
I'm a glad to see that here we can!
 
Re: Ligue 1 - 11/12

PLF said:
@Edmundo, good points made though it seems to me that you have some personal dislike somehow for OL. So if I may make a small suggestion, I don't know if you're a betting man but if you are, and given the fact that you actually think they are the worst team left in CL (which is I believe what you said before), don't you think you should bet on their match against APOEL? After all APOEL was probably the most impressive team in the group stage of CL this year given their expectations and tough group and topped it while OL struggled to get through and had some real luck on final day and maybe even some controversy.

I was looking at odds right now and this jumped out at me and it reminded me of you so I thought I'd make this suggestion. Currently bookmarkers (or at least Bodog which is what I use) is giving OL 1.44 and 7.0 to APOEL while a draw in France gets 4.3 for every dollar wagered.

Don't you think given your certainty of OL being crap this is worth putting a few quid on and making some $$$? I think it may be.

Those odds are for the match in France of course but it's obvious the bookmakers still see OL as big favourites. Wonder what the odds will be for the match in Cyprus actually. That'll be interesting.
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It's tempting to put some cash on it, but APOEL are a bit of an unknown quantity. They are decent at home, not only this time but also the last time they were in the CL groups (I think they took a few points off Chelsea) - from what I saw of them at the tail end of the group stage I had a feeling they might have peaked too early or maybe their bubble was starting to burst. I saw their second last game in full (away in Zenit) and they should have really lost that it was 0-0 and they didnt really threaten at all, it may have been tactical as 0-0 gave them a great chance of going through. They lost their last home game 0-2 to Shaktar, I didnt see it and they might have been playing their reserves (since they were already through) so it's hard to call.
 
Re: Ligue 1 - 11/12

I know what you mean. It is a tough call and if you wanna know my personal opinion, I wouldn't bet on it actually. I think either team can win it but I'd definitely lean towards OL to go through. Far superior CL knockout round experience plus let's face it, better players even if not a better 'team'.

But I just suggested it for you as I'd gotten the feeling you really don't rate Lyon at all and since APOEL looked a solid enough outfit in group stages and the odds are heavily in favour of OL, thought you may find it tempting and a good bet. :)

Let me know if you do end up putting money on this or any other match and how much. I'll probably be betting on a couple CL matches in next round. Best of luck.
 
Re: Ligue 1 - 11/12

gerd said:
I'm impressed with that last post. You obviously know a lot more about this than i do.
You also make some good points. I agree with the fact that it could be better if several clubs have good players instead of one who has too much (as was the case with Lyon, you definitely make a valid point there).

Still, i'm not entirely convinced that what PSG is doing now is better than what Lyon did. French football would fare if there were several clubs like PSG...maybe this can attract other big investors. Then it would be a good thing.

Nevertheless: very good post.
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Thanks for your words. Well this (the bit in bold) is what we can hope for. As others have pointed out, Lyons should in theory be in a good financial situation as they have had constant CL money, and they have sold players to other European leagues for very big profit. Theoretically they should be able to sign strong players from abroad, in a way they did with Lisandro Lopez and Aly Cissokho, as both of these players could have moved to bigger leagues (I think the latter was linked with Milan and maybe Arsenal). Marseilles also have a massive support in southern France, and also they have a very big support outside of France - they might well be taken over next, even if they are not, they could generate a lot more overseas revenue than other French clubs.

I guess it's clubs like Lille, Bordeaux, etc who might be fearfull. But historically these clubs have always been sucessful more because of good management, good player development, and smart transfers, rather than massive/high profile signings. There is no reason why they cannot continue to do these things. Furthermore a league which potentially has players like Kaka, Pato etc in it, will be attractive to other players even if they join different teams. For instance players like Nicolas Lodeiro, James Rodriguez etc might not be "high profile" enough to go to clubs like PSG, but they could go to Lille, Bordeaux etc (instead of going from Latin America to Ajax and Porto), and this will improve the quality of the league. Maybe also promising young French players like Armand Traore, Pogba, Lassana Diarra, might stay in the French league longer and develop their talents there rather than leaving at such an early age.

Also even if PSG spend a huge amount of money it will not, on it's own, be a gaurentee of sucess. There are other big factors, like a stable management structure, balanced on-the-field team, good dressing room spirit. With money alone they might struggle. For instance if you look at Man City it's only now, having given Mancini enough time (and with other personnel like Lombardo and Platt), only having started to stablise the team structure, and only having started to improve the dressing room morale are they starting to win things. Obviously the money was a big factor, but there were also other things they had to improve.

Real Madrid (and to a lesser extent Atletico) used to spend vast sums of money but changed their management so frequently it negated their weath. Currently Chelsea are in a mini-crisis despite spending big on players like Torres, Lukaku, Mata over the last year. Looking at the squad, despite all the big signings, they seem a little suspect at the back and the team balance doesnt look ideal. People always said that Bayern was "FC Hollywood" and there were "too many egos" to manage, I think it's less of a problem for Bayern now, but there is always a risk for a big spending club (like say PSG) that this situation could occur. Money can greatly increase the chances of success, yes it lets you sign big players and improve a team, but without other factors it alone is no guarantee of sucess. I think the French league should improve in terms of standard now, hopefully it will be competitive and we will be able to see lots of players of world class talent playing in it - like in the 1980s and 1990s, where there were players like Rai, Mozer, Francescoli, Johnny Rep, etc.
 
Re: Ligue 1 - 11/12

Well edmundo, thursday L'Equipe's Philippe Auclair was in the Football Weekly podcast. He talked about PSG and the big money. In his opinion from the big football clubs is the worst club were big investors should invest their moeney (and yet from the bigger clubs the only possible). PSG exists only since 1970 (could be 1969 or 1971) and will never be a popular success, simply because Paris is no football minded city. PSG is not popular in Paris according to Auclair.

Auclair thinks the Arab investors would have done better to invest their money in either Olympique Lyonnais or Olympique Marseille. But according to him Aulas would never have permitted that in Lyon and the owner structure at L'OM is that chaotic (with even ties with some ultra groups) that the club is unsellable.

Auclair also told that foreign investors have money in AS Monaco, but at the moment they are last in Ligue 2.

Personally i would like a big investor in Lille: big city, good club, that can attract Belgian fans (when i lived in Ghent i went to watch all the home games of Lille, at the time they had two Belgian forwards with Erwin Vandenbergh and Philippe Desmedt, but that is 25 years ago). Now with Hazard (and his brother), they attract once again Belgian fans.
 
Re: Ligue 1 - 11/12

Yeah I would have thought that OM would have made the most sense as they have probably the biggest following outside of France, and have a strong following in that part of the world. There was boardroom problem with Louis-Dreyfus and Pape Diouf, then Dassier took over, but I think it would be hard to take over the club in it's current form as the boardroom is hard.

I was saying in the Serie A forum, I don't totally agree with Auclair, since there are a lot of the suburban places of Paris where football has the potential to be big. In fact it is big in some of these areas, but the people maybe don't feel as much affinity for PSG as they might. But this could change if PSG are more sucessfull or it could even happen if they targeted cheaper season tickets at these fans. Also a few years ago there were problems within factions of PSG fans, and some PSG fan groups had a bad reputation for trouble, but hopefully the situation is better now.

I would like to see Lille do well, they are a very well run club and seem to have coped ok despite losing Gervinho, Cabaye and Rami. Indeed Northern France has a good reputation for football, around 10-15 years ago (before Lyons starting doing very well) RC Lens (which is also near the Belgian border only around 30 miles away) were often in the Champions League and won the league in 1998. They had some great players at the time (Tony Vairelles, Pierre Laigle, Fredreic Dehu) and it really looked like Northern France would have a strong team in ligue 1, but they somewhat imploded. And years ago Stade de Reims were one of the biggest teams in Europe.
 
Re: Ligue 1 - 11/12

I like all northern clubs: Lille, Valenciennes, Sedan, Lens, Boulogne-sur-Mer: they are all not that far for us. I only watched Lille and Lens (fantastic public in Lens, hope they can be a big club again).
 
Re: Ligue 1 - 11/12

I remember around 10 years ago another northern team, Racing Calais getting to the French Cup final, and taking the lead against Nantes. They lost 2-1, but it was the greatest achievement of almost any club in the modern era for this team to get to the final... To put it into persepective Calais were in the CFA, basically an amateur team, the English equivalent would be Tamworth, Forest Green Rovers or Fleetwood, (in Germany it would have been a team like TuS Celle or Ludwigsburg) they beat established Ligue 1 teams (like Strasbourg and Bordeaux) getting all the way to the French Cup final, playing at Stade de France and taking the lead.
 
Re: Ligue 1 - 11/12

As far as I know, RC Lens is actually the biggest club up there and has more fans than Lille. A richer history too but given the fact that the clubs have gone almost opposite directions over the past decade, I think they may well be equal in terms of support and fanbase now.

In terms of Paris not being a 'football' city, I've heard all about that and I agree. BUT, it's still a BIG enough city with enough football fans (and not to mention all the suburbs like Edmundo did) that should have ONE big club. So yes, it's vastly different from London where people live for football but London has like 10 professional clubs or is it even more? Paris can surely have ONE. That's the difference. I don't think they are so anti-football that they don't have enough fans/support for even one team in topflight.

OM always has been and I think in some ways always will be the most popular French club and yes they have massive support even outside France but investing in the capital club and helping them fulfill its potential was a good idea in my opinion and will pay dividends. Not just for Parisiens but for France as a whole. And like Edmundo said, when clubs start being successful and not underachieving (like PSG has been for years) and playing good football, suddenly a lot of people in the city and around who previously wouldn't relate to PSG so much but are footie fans, start doing so! I'm optimistic about it all.

I'd like to see Lens actually get that investment. It'd be nice to have them among the top half of the table again and they are a big club who should be in Ligue 1. I always likedned them to Newcastle in England. Bigger club, passionate support, bad management in recent years has meant its underachieving. And with Lille doing so well already, and their new stadium next year, it's not so much them that needs the investment but their neighbours and arch-rivals. Would make things more interesting.
 
Re: Ligue 1 - 11/12

Cabelino Andrade Maxwell is a new PSG player!

56525.jpg


Pato is next?
 
Re: Ligue 1 - 11/12

im watching the most disgusting display of football i have perhaps seen ever... auxerre vs st ettienne... these guys are just passing the ball around and auxerre isnt even pressuring them... last 20 minutes has been like that simpsons episode.. fullback to halfback, halfback, halfback to fullback, fullback........ anyone know what the fuck is going on here?
 
Re: Ligue 1 - 11/12

gomito#10 said:
im watching the most disgusting display of football i have perhaps seen ever... auxerre vs st ettienne... these guys are just passing the ball around and auxerre isnt even pressuring them... last 20 minutes has been like that simpsons episode.. fullback to halfback, halfback, halfback to fullback, fullback........ anyone know what the fuck is going on here?
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Why look this game ? Auxerrewant stay in Ligue 1 and play very defensive !

Better to look Lyon vs PSG right now, half time 3-2 crazy game and the Bastos goal :SHOCK:
 
Re: Ligue 1 - 11/12

Teams should get an extra point after a game like this. Because after all, Auxerre and St Etienne get 1 point for their boring game, just as Lyon and Paris for their show...
By the way, it's good to see this topic back!!
 
Re: Ligue 1 - 11/12

I don't see why PSG should get an extra point for merely a draw against a team whose is fraction worth in money of their team...hell every match they can't win should result in 0 points....

Give Auxerre and St-Etienne the money that Leonardo jerk spend and they will also play attractive football.

In the end PSG lost two points...all the rest is talk.

Montpellier for champions!
 
Dammit I should have watched the match and not looked here. @ Thomas I watched st etienne cause there my boys... Have a ml going with them... Sakho is a freak of nature... Looks like a CB but is a left winger... He pulls it off somehow, might be the biggest player ever to have skill like that ....
 
Re: Ligue 1 - 11/12

Come on gerd i was just saying this like that. It is incredible we can't talk of PSG without having you coming with your "money" comments and stuff. We understand that you hate Paris SG but that you want it or not they are on the top! Your hate will not change anything! Create a topic where you can spit all your rage out against Paris, but just let us enjoy that beautiful game that we saw this saturday!


PS: I now understand why this topic was down all this time, your comments really make people wants to come to discuss football here...
 
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Re: Ligue 1 - 11/12

I probably was too harsh in my comments. I apologize for that.
But i can assure you that i don't hate PSG. I simply think that they are an overrated club until now (if i'm not mistaken they have only once won Ligue 1). At the moment they have a team that could win silverware (Pastore is even one of my favourite current players).
Unlike many other people i have nothing against clubs like Chelsea, Man City and PSG.
However, i didn't like the way Kambouaré was treated. And i tend to favour the underdog...i really would like to see Montpellier win the title, but that is not because i don't like PSG.

But nevertheless: you are right, i'm sorry. I sincerely hope this thread was death because of me... I will take care what i write in the future. There was no disrespect meant.
 
Re: Ligue 1 - 11/12

overrated club??? but what they did? do they need to apology to make this great game 4-4? and if they finish champion they will need to apologize for that? Come on, people have always complained that Paris have money but no results and now that they have the results according to the money they have it is still a problem. They are just going the same way big clubs do: invest money to have results. And Paris SG is not responsilbe of the media who makes them "overrated" as you says. People often forget that. Paris SG is one thing, the media who can't spend one day without talking of Paris in another thing.

You are just as Dugarry who thinks that because he is "World Cup winner" he can give lessons (joking).
 
Re: Ligue 1 - 11/12

You misunderstood me.
When i wrote "overrated", i was referring to the past. In the past PSG was the club who invested often and a lot, but who failed to deliver.
I have nothing against the fact that they are investing now. My only worry is that PSG will become one big fish in a litle pond, and that is not good for Franch football and in the long term bad for PSG too (look at Celtic and Rangers in Scotland and even Barcelona and Real Madrid in Spain).
 
Re: Ligue 1 - 11/12

ok, but anyway I have nothing against you, it is just that for me it is too easy to come and say "it is not fair, they have a lot of money..". This is what we often listen since Qatar bought the club. I understand in some ways because I am pretty sure I would be jealous if this happened to another team, but at the same time it was what I had to support in the last 10 years when OM and OL could afford to buy good players when Paris was struggling to sign players of 3-4M€. And as a fan of Paris SG I am of course happy to have what I see as a great opportunity for my team to come back where I found it back in the 90's in the top of Europe. And I feel a bit sad of all this critics because this is just the way football is. Real Madrid spent 100M€ for C.Ronaldo, and the french are shocked because Paris spent the same amount to build a team... OM and OL spent 200M€ each in the last 5 years and I don't remember reading and hearing such critics.

I am also agree with your point about Scotland and Spain League, but the most important competition in the CL, and if you want to be perfromant in the CL you need to "kill" the championship fast. French Ligue 1 is pretty strong league, that is maybe why french teams don't have good results in European competitions. Lyon had the best results in CL in the years they were 10 points above the 2nd in Ligue 1.
It is unfair for the championship but good for the CL, and as I said the competition that matters is the CL.
 
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