Ligue 1 Talk

I’m sorry Lyon fans, but I have to bring it up. This week, Olympique Lyonnais, the mighty French side that defeated Liverpool at Anfield, were crushed on the road with a 4-1 loss to Nice. While Nice is a team that has played under their potential this season, they were still a team that was in the relegation zone.

I have heard some people saying that this shows that Lyon’s win at Anfield was ‘a fluke’. That a Liverpool side that was banged up should have won against Lyon. They base this on the fact that Lyon lost to a team that was in the relegation zone.

This, again, shows the lack of knowledge of Premiership fans, most whom rarely look at other leagues, and assume that their league is superior. Anyone that watches Ligue 1 could tell you that Nice has been playing under their potential and that there was a possibility of an upset in the making as Lyon travelled south. In fact, though I picked Lyon to win, I said that this game could be quite close and maybe the upset of the week. And I think that any Ligue 1 fan could agree with that assessment.

But does Lyon’s loss, along with some others, show the strength of Ligue 1? I have argued that Ligue 1, along with the Bundesliga, have the best teams from top to bottom. Only in these leagues does it seem like the underdogs have a chance to win.

Therefore, lets look at some of the other leagues. In the last 24 years, La Liga has only three other teams that weren’t named FC Barcelona or Real Madrid winning the championship. In England, only two teams out of the top four have won the title in the last 21 years. In Serie A, only two team out of their top five (Roma, Lazio, AC and Inter Milan and Juventus) have won the title.

Ligue 1, on the other hand, has had eight champions in the last 20 years. And, unlike the other league who have always had a ‘top four’ or ‘top five’, Ligue 1 doesn’t really have a clear cut ”top four”. Yes, I know that people are going to say that the top 3 teams are Marseille, Lyon and Bordeaux. But the fact is that before Lyon won their seven championships in a row, they had yet to win a championship. Bordeaux has only won six championships in their entire history. PSG, another team that has only won the championship twice since 1970, started in the Championnat National, winning that, and then winning Ligue 2. Rarely in England can you see a team go, in 16 years, from being a League One team to Premier Champions. But that is what we saw in Paris St-Germain.

And we can go on. Lens, a team that won the championship in 1998, were just promoted from Ligue 2 and are now fighting relegation yet again. In 2001, Nantes won Ligue 1. Now they are in Ligue 2.

And, unlike the Premiership, where we see teams being relegated mostly because of financial problems (example Leeds United), Ligue 1 teams are usually deomoted because they just have a bad season. Rarely does finances play into the equation.

See what I am getting at?  Ligue 1, unlike La  Liga, the EPL and Serie A, is unpredictable. And as you look at the table today, Montpellier HSC would be heading to the Europa League. In fact, the two teams that represent Ligue 1 in the Europa League have been struggling this season, with Toulouse in 11th place and Lille in 15th.

In Ligue 1, the saying “any team can beat any other team on any given day” is the truth. In EPL, the usual ‘upset’ doesn’t happen as often. If Manchester United lose, it is usually to Liverpool, or Manchester City, or another top team. Rarely do we see a team like Burnley do what they did at the start of the season.

But in Ligue 1, we have seen the ‘top’ teams lose to the ‘bottom’ teams. Why? I feel that the teams at the bottom half of the table, like St. Etienne, Lille, Nice, Toulouse and PSG (who are now in 13th), can defeat a team like Lyon, Bordeaux or Marseille. And these teams lower in the table have already proven that they can do this.

Lets look at Bordeaux’s losses… Auxerre and St. Etienne, not exactly powerhouses this season. Lyon…Nice and Sochaux, again, not powerhouses. Marseille lost to Valencienne. Monaco lost to Nancy, Sochaux and St. Etienne. This shows that there is some diversity in the teams and that, truly, any team can beat any other team on any given week. And Lyon’s loss to Nice just proves that.

So, Liverpool fans, don’t look too much into this lost. Let’s face it…if Nice were in the EPL, they would be at least midtable right now.

Filed under: Ligue 1 Commentary Tagged: | Bordeaux, Champions League, English Premiership, La Liga, Ligue 1, Liverpool, Lyon, Olympique Marseille, Serie A