Month: August 2016

The French First Division was characterized by clear separation at top and bottom this season: two outsiders and two title contenders. Nothing surprising in between – the known stronger teams ended high, the lesser teams – low.

Angers was last with 24 points.

Nimes finished 19th with 26 points, joining Angers in relegation. Both teams were well bellow the rest of the league.

Tours was 18th , but with 31 points they were out of danger for a long time – although at the bottom of the table, Tours were successful in their own way: managed to remain in the first division without much trouble.

Laval was similar to Tours – staying with the best was their maximum goal, so the season was fine: they were 16th.

The crisis of Nice continued – the squad was not that bad, considering the names, but the club was going downhill for some years and there was no reversal of the fall: Nice was not yet in direct danger of relegation, but it was just a matter of time. 15th this year.

Mid-table had expected clubs in it: Lens, Sochaux, Nancy, Valenciennes, the usual dwellers.

Perhaps Metz deserves a note: they had relatively strong season, taking 9th place at the end with 36 points. Not much by itself, but a good beginning of coaching career for Kasperczak, one of most impressive members of the 1974 Polish national team. And practically the first of the key stars to switch from playing to coaching.

Auxerre finished 10th – not bad at all for a virtually unknown club only 3 years ago. Coach Roux was becoming familiar name, pushing his creation higher and higher. The formula was stubbornly uncompromising: local boys, helped by foreign stars – so far, only Polish. Three this season – Klose, a reserve by now, and Wieczorek, remembered form the 1974 World Cup. The third is not on this photo, but on the following one:

Andrzey Szarmach, one of the best Polish strikers in the 1970s, the most famous player in the squad of Auxerre. Next to the Poles, two local boys were getting stronger and stronger – Ferreri and Bats. Auxerre was the club steadily going up.

The top of the table was familiar:

Lyon was 6th, although they were really at the top of the mid-table bulk. May be a bit weaker than usual, but just a bit – they were constant feature of top French clubs year after year.

Paris SG was 5th with 46 points, 5 more than Lyon, but like Lyon, they were continuously among the best, without really able to contest the title. Perhaps the club philosophy was essentially wrong: for years Paris SG depended on oldish stars. Big names technically helped building followers – something important for a still very young club with ambitions – but on the negative side was the simple fact that the veterans were beyond their peak and the chemistry was not good enough for conquering the league. Bathenay, Rocheteau, Huck, Baratelli already had their best years elsewhere. Toko, Dahleb, and Pilorget never became first-class stars and the same was true for the Portuguese import Silva Braga. Luis Fernandez was practically the only younger player with star qualities – experienced and solid squad, but not a champion squad. Again.

Monaco, notoriously unstable, was at a good stretch and finished 4th with 49 points. They lost bronze medals only on goal-difference, but the future looked bright: Petit, Amoros, Ettori, Couriol, Emon, Bellone, the foreign solid players Umberto Barberis (Switzerland) and Victor Trossero (Argentina) – a well mixed skeleton of young and old stars, with reliable talent at the fringe. Stability was the constant issue, but the potential was very strong.

Bordeaux fully recovered its leading position in French football this season, but the team was not yet at its peak – 3rd place corresponded to their near-peak situation. Like Monaco, this was a squad with a future, perhaps better one than Monaco’s, for Bordeaux had a team of fighters: Tresor, Giresse, Lacombe were already the big leaders. May be Bracci and Gemmrich were a bit over the hill and van Straelen – not exactly the player expected to be five years ago, but there was solid and rising players like Rohr, Thouvenel, and Soler. Eime Jacquet was making his name coaching this team and whatever was still missing was easy to correct – it was a team needing only a fine tuning, a bit of a finishing touch.

The race for the title was familiar – between Nantes and Saint Etienne, the best French clubs since 1970. Both teams managed to change generations without losing class. Perhaps two ago Nantes was fresher, but now they needed a bit of reshaping – St. Etienne meantime had their new team, promising to be at least as strong as the one of the mid-70s, possibly greater. Yet, the race was tight and St. Etienne prevailed minimally – they won one match more than their rival. One more title.

Coach Robert Herbin must be on focus: he was with the club since 1957, first as a player, and in 1972 he took the coaching position from Albert Batteux. St. Etienne was already leading French club in the 1960s – with Herbin in it – and the 33-years old inexperienced coach only improved on the team, making it a leading European team, which culminated in 1976. But Herbin did not allow the inevitably aging team to sink – on the contrary, he managed to keep it at top of French football while he changed generation and by 1980 his new squad was ready. This time it looked like that Herbin took one more step up: St. Etienne started as strong French team, became European leading team, and now had the appearance of world class team: it was no longer making players, but buying great stars: the new team was based on Michel Platini and Johnny Rep. By now only 4 players of the old wonderful team remained – Ivan Curkovic, Gerard Janvion, Christian Lopez, and Jacques Santini, but transition had been smooth – Curkovic, for instance, was no longer the regular starter, replaced by Jean Castaneda, who was included in the French national team. The old-timers no longer defined the team, but the next generation was firmly in charge: Patrick Battiston, Jean-Francois Larios, Jacques Zimako. Of course, Michel Platini, coming to his peak, was central figure. Perhaps the squad needed a few finishing touches, but now it looked like that they will be at the level of Platini or Rep and the 1980s looked more than promising – St. Etienne started the new decade clearly determined to be even stronger than it was in the 1970s. Bright future on the horizon, but… wait a few years, keeping an eye on Italy. At the moment – a record 10th title, all but one of them achieved with Herbin as either player, or coach. Who would have expected this will be the last title?

 

 

Second Division Group B did not have even the small drama Group A had: one team dominated the championship. At the other side of the table the battle for survival preoccupied about 7 clubs, except the very last: Stade Malherbe Caen was the outsider. 18th with 22 points.

UES Montmorillon ended 17th with 27 points and was relegated along with Caen.

Of the group which escaped relegation Paris FC – 15th with 28 points – was the interesting name.

Birth defects, one could say. A decade ago the newly formed Parisian club was split in two by the decision of the Federation and Paris FC was left almost with nothing. The club fought bravely to establish itself, even played in the top division, but… Paris St. Germain got the money and since France was not crazy about football, even Paris was not the kind of city where two clubs, especially new, could prosper. Paris FC was still positioned higher than two older and more famous Parisian clubs – Stade de Francais and Racing – but it was undeniably small club, sinking deeper and deeper. At the turn of 1980s its sole ambition was to stick in second division, however perilously. By now, the company Paris FC kept was insignificant – teams like

AAJ Blois, 12th this season and perhaps happy with that. Merchadier captained them, but even for him success was already a distant memory.

Yet, it was not Paris FC in true decline, but the most famous French club of the past: Stade Reims. After the end of the 1950s Reims was steadily going down, to find itself not only in the second division at the beginning of the 1980s, but also as a run-of-the-mill team there – mid-table was the best they could do: 10th this year. Reims never climbed back to leading position in French football. Now it was at the level of

AC Le Havre, which occasionally would be able to have a good season and go up, but more likely was to play uninspired second division football – they were 8th this year – or

En Avant Guingamp, which was a stable feature of the second division, but did not dream so far for something better. Typically, Guingamp finished at 7th place – safe mid-table.

Stade Rennes ended 4th with 40 points – however, Rennes was similar to Marseille: they were one of the constantly moving between first and second division clubs, a club in between, so failing promotion was not exactly a big news.

FC Rouen was 3rd with 42 points – a relatively good season, but promotion was clearly not up to them. Perhaps the most memorable thing of them was their kit: by itself, not unique, but always very rare three-colour combination in the history of football.

Excellent season for the small US Noeux-les-Mines – second place. With 44 points they did not really challenge the league champions, but this was one the greatest seasons in the history of a club for which second division was pretty much the highest possible level of success. The squad itself is a testimony of the great contribution of the Poles to French football: 5 Polish names here, although it was traditionally difficult to separate imports from French players of Polish stock. The great season should be attributed to the coach – Houllier was not famous at all yet, but only at the beginning of his own success.

Stade Brest was the dominant champion. They left Noeux-les-Mines 5 points behind and finished with 49 points from 20 wins, 9 ties, and 5 losses. Best attack and best defense, naturally.

Well, Brest was modest club without serious money, but the league was not very strong and a little drop of ambition made the difference between them and the rest. As far as names go, Brest had perhaps more strong players than any other club: three. The French Parizon and Keruzore and the Yugoslavian striker Drago Vabec, who never played much for his native country – because he played for a wrong club, as he said – was a bit whimsical, thus unpredictable and not always reliable, but proved to be very loyal player. He was already a member of Brest for years, come low or high. Promotion for Brest meant a lot and they deserved it without a question. Well done. There is a bit of a problem with the historic record of the club – it was founded in 1903 under the name Armoricaine de Brest, but changed name in 1950 – with that came a new registration, so technically 1950 is given as a founding year and the record runs from there: under this name Brest played so far only 1 single season in First Division – 1979-80. After a single year in the second level, they moved up again for a second try of top level football. Good luck!

France, rapidly moving up on international scale, was still pretty much the same domestically: no really big clubs emerged, even St. Etienne and Nantes did not come close not to Real Madrid, Juventus, or Bayern, but to, say, Anderlecht or Ajax. Second division football was pretty much like everywhere else except England – there was sharp difference between first and second division football. The lower level distinctly belonged to modest clubs without much money and, thus, without big ambitions. One thing France differed from the rest of Europe was that the two groups of the second division had not only relegated and promoted newcomers, but clubs were moved from one group to the other every year. For the 1980-81 season Besancon, Angouleme, and Montlucon were moved from Group B to Group A, and Paris FC, Blois, and Orleans went the other way. The rest was business as usual: 18 teams in a group, the winner promoted to First Division and the last two relegated to Third Division. Hm, not quite – three teams were relegated from Group A and two from Group B – Third Division was organized into five groups, that was why.

AS Corbeil Essonnes finished 18th and last.

Olympique Avignon – 17th. Both clubs at the bottom finished with 21 points, the outsiders of the league, but if Corbeil was more or less expected to be there, Avignon was playing first division football not very long ago – first division they were not, seemingly second division was their right level, but now they were going down and rightly so.

The third relegated team finished with 24 points and lost the battle for survival by a single point, but frankly US Tavaux Damparis were not the kind of club able to stay in the second tier for long.

Right above the relegated were teams expected to be in the lower half of the table:

Etoile Motlucon – 15th, AS Libourne – 14th, and

FC Grenoble – 12th. Pure survivalists. Down on its luck was a club with more familiar name –

Gazelec Ajaccio ended 13th which was not all that surprising – the club’s performance amplitude was very wide and unpredictable, but there was also confusing element in tracing their records: the city of Ajaccio had two clubs with very similar names, same colours, and practically identical logos. Since they rarely played in the same division, usually were referred to just as ‘Ajaccio’, making difficult to know which one was actually playing in the upper divisions: on this occasion it was Gazelec, seemingly the stronger club in 1960-70s.

The mid-table was more or less familiar and true to expectations:

AS Cannes was 9th, FC Gueugnon – 8th.

Standing from left: C.Nowotarski (entr) – Ch.Trivino – Mamessier – JC Berthommier – M.Berthommier – en équipe A.Chaussin – JP.Segaud – P.Rossin – Lecroat – Godot – Bandera – Conrath.

Sitting : J.Duch – Clopin – Soulier – Stropoli – A.Bernard – Segard – JL.Fournier – Borgna – Regaisse.

Neither team developed ambitions as yet, continuing there rather mellow existence in the second level of French football. The biggest disappointment was Olympique Marseille.

6th place with 39 points, 3 points behind the the 5th and not even remotely close to the actual top – if there was a big downfall, it happened to Marseille: the leading French club at the beginning of the 1970s went into severe crisis – sure bad decisions and likely deep financial problems reduced the club often considered as true French giant to relegation and even the second division was a bit too much: the squad was not even pedestrian, but almost anonymous. Only the veteran Zvunka remained from the great old days, and he was only a veteran now.

AS Angouleme, just moved to this group, finished 5th , but their glory days were clearly over long time ago – solid, as it seemed, Angouleme was not in the race for promotion. Only three clubs aimed higher and perhaps one of them was more of an accident than the real thing: RCFC Besancon finished 3rd, losing second place on goal-difference. Still, Besancon was unlikely candidate for promotion – the top two were seen as potential candidates. As far as a strong team is recognized by the players in the squad, FC Toulouse and Montpellier were stronger than the rest.

FC Toulouse had the most famous players – only two, but that was much more the rest of the league members had: the former Belgian international van Binst, still vividly remembered from the great exploits of Anderlecht a few years ago, and the well traveled Hungarian refugee Atilla Ladinsky – unfortunately, both were at the end of their careers and no longer the players they used to be. Toulouse obviously lost steam and was able only to finish second, edging Besancon on goal-difference, but 3 points behind the champions.

La Paillade Montpellier topped the league with 50 points from 21 wins, 8 ties, and 5 losses. Their strongest point was defense – the team allowed just 17 goals in 36 championship matches. Like Toulouse, their stars were older players of better past than future – Mezy and Saramagna. As a whole, Montpellier were old – one of the original members of French professional football, but a modest club, more often found in second division than first. To a point, they wanted to return to top flight and succeeded this season.