The French championship this year was a two-team race for the title, followed by another pair battling for third place. At the bottom – 2 outsiders and and about 5 teams trying to avoid the third relegation spot. There were changes in the situation of few clubs, but in general French football was pretty much the same as ever: relatively mellow and pleasant to watch championship of fairly equal teams.
Montpellier – dead last with 22 points. Hardly a surprise. Having aging Sarramagna plus the Argentine Victor Trossero and the Brazilian Luizinho da Silva was not enough.
With 23 points, OGC Nice finished 19th. The decline started in the middle of the 1970s and now reached its logical conclusion. Difficult to think that Nice was among the best French teams less than 10 years ago. This season Nice was the only club in the league unable to win even a single away match.
Valenciennes was 18th with 30 points. Usual candidate for relegation anyway.
Metz survived – 17th with 32 points.
Olympique Lyon was in crisis – they finished above Metz only because of better-difference, generally fighting for survival this year. Perhaps the recruited foreigners present Lyon’s troubles best: Simo Nikolic and Slobodan Topalovic were little known Yugoslavian players. In the past Lyon employed high-profiled Yugoslavs, but not anymore – both would stay with the club for many years: Nikolic – 1980-85, the goalkeeper – 1981-87. The interesting point of the season was the new recruit Topalovic: years ago he started his career with 1. FC Koln together with Schumacher and for awhile appeared to be the preferable choice. However, by 1980 Schumacher was becoming a world-class star, but Topalovic entirely faded away, even having to move to Yugoslavia for the first time, hoping to revive his career. Playing for Lyon was evidence of his good efforts, but he remained unknown player.
AJ Auxerre was 15th with 34 points. It was predictable and understandable case: after climbing form complete obscurity to the top division, the fuel of enthusiasm and surprise runs out. Slipping down was inevitable, it was time to really grasp where the team was and to recharge. Nothing tragic. The Polish heroes of 1974, Szarmach and Wieczorek, were still solid backbone.
OSC Lille – 14th with 34 points. Nothing special, as they were for many years – just avoiding relegation successfully.
RC Lens – the best of the worst, so to say. 13th with 34 points, placed above Lille and Auxerre thanks to superior goal-difference. Anything interesting? They had a little known Argentinian player since 1979 – Daniel Alberto and a second foreigner arrived before this season: the Island national team star Teitur Thordarsson. There was one more Islandic player in the French league with the same name – just to confuse the matter, since even the top Islandic players were not so well known.
Bastia – 12th. Their good run was over perhaps 2 years ago and they dropped to their usual lower-half position. Dressed in their second kit for the season, which makes it a rare picture: red is not Bastia’s colour – dark blue is. Roger Milla hardly make a difference, therefore, his ‘discovery’ was still in the future – not a distant future, but it was during the 1982 World Cup after the French championship was well finished.
Tours – 11th with 35 points. For a modest club, not bad at all. Delio Onnis was the sole big name in the team – aging, well beyond his peak, but still lethal scorer. He helped Tours a lot.
A few years back, when RC Strasbourg won the French championship nobody made a mistake – they were one-time wonder, not going to last. Now everything was back to the familiar – 10th with 36 points.
Brest had a strong season, perhaps of their strongest. 9th with 38 points. The Yugoslav Drago Vabec was their beloved and loyal star. To him was added a second Yugoslav before the season: Milan Radovic. It was wise decision – both foreigners came from Croatian clubs, Vabec from Dinamo Zagreb, Radovic – from NK Rijeka. No tensions between them.
Nancy was a bit of an enigma: severely weakened by the transfer of Michel Platini to St. Etienne, they still managed to perform relatively well – with a squad similar to Valenciennes, not to Bordeaux! For how long? Nobody knew.
Third row: Serge Barrientos (Adj), Dominique Bathenay, Thierry Morin, Raymond Domenech, Luis Fernandez, Boubacar Sarr, Georges Peyroche (Entr)
Middle row: Jean-Marc Pilorget, Nambatingue Toko, Ivica Surjak, Eric Renaut, Daniel Sanchez, Alain Prefaci, Dominique Rocheteau
Sitting: Franck Merelle, Philippe Col, Jean-Claude Lemoult, Francis Borelli (Prés), Michel N’Gom, Didier Toffolo, Dominique Baratelli.
Paris SG was the constant underachiever by now – they were 7th this season with 43 points. True, 4 points ahead of Nancy, but Nancy was their immediate neighbour… Everybody was used to this: PSG was constantly in the upper half of the table, yet never a medal contender. Their initial policy from their early days in the 1970s was still the same and it backfired: obtaining high-profile, but aging players simply did not work. Baratelli, Bathenay, Domenech, Rocheteau all made their names elsewhere and years ago. Only Luis Fernandes, still relatively unknown, was current strong player with potential for the future. Even their newest recruit, the Yugoslav star striker Ivica Surjak, was of the ilk of the French aging stars. Having the ambitions of a superclub, PSG was just not able to materialize them. Yet.
Approaching crisis was detectable in Nantes even before this season – the key players were inevitably aging and so far no effort for real rebuilding was made. Most of the starters were painfully familiar for years… 6th place this year should have been alarming: the team was really slipping down. Enzo Trossero returned to Argentina after the end of the championship – he was just loaned to Nantes by Independiente anyway – and Henri Michel retired. The birthdates of Bertrand-Demande, Amisse, Rampillon, Baroncelli were becoming important… negative factor. FC Nantes was on decline.
Stade Lavallois was 5th , a point better than Nantes. Surprisingly strong season for normally insignificant club. The squad was not much, so Laval was hardly expected to stay among the favourites, but this year was great. May have been due to the new foreign recruits – Uwe Krause (West Germany) and Karl Thordarsson (Iceland). However, Laval was not even close to the medal race with their 44 points.
Girondins Bordeaux lost bronze medals by a point, finishing with 48 points. Certainly the team on ascent and one to look for in the future – Bordeaux already had impressive team: Tresor, Bracci, Lacombe, Tigana, Giresse, Gemmrich, Soler, Thouvenel, Girard, Rohr, and the Yugoslavian national team goalkeeper Pantelic. A testimony of the good work of coach Aime Jacquet, who was making his name. Not ready yet for a serious conquest, but coming close.
Sochaux clinched bronze medals with 49 points. A good spell for the club, but it was not going to last – the team was rather limited and not at all a title contender. Like most French clubs, the good fortune of Sochaux depended on handful of good players – Patrick Revelli, Albert Rust, Genghini, Stopyra, Zimako, Yugoslavians Sime Luketin and Zvonko Ivezic. Retirements and transfers elsewhere could change good days to the exact opposite in a flash.
Two teams competed for the title and a single point decided the winner.
Saint Etienne was the usual suspect, of course. They still looked the strongest squad in the league, especially with Michel Platini and Johnny Rep in front. Two new recruits supposedly reinforced the team – the enigmatic Argentine, or French, Raoul Nogues and Danish Benny Nielsen, who arrived from Anderlecht. But there was already something dangerous detected… which showed itself in losing the title. Yes, they run for it to the end; yes, losing by a single point is rather unfortunate. But they lost it. And not just the title.
AS Monaco with 55 points from 24 wins and 7 ties clinched the title. Monaco scored 70 goals – only St. Etienne scored more, 74 – and received 29, the best defensive record this year. They lost 7 matches. Thus, the club won its 4th French title. Yet, Monaco was peculiar – they never had particularly great and memorable team. Sure, there were Bellone, Ettori, Bijotat, Couriol, aging Pecout, the tall Swede Ralph Edstrom and the Swiss influential midfielder Umberto Barberis, but compared to St. Ettiene, Bordeaux, Paris SG, and Nantes the champions looked weaker. The foreigners were no longer at their prime and except Bruno Bellone Monaco did not have a true big French star. To a point, their victory could be seen more as an evidence of decline of St. Etienne and Nantes, of unfinished Bordeaux and faulty building policy of Paris SG. The champions were hardly a team going to dominate. Rather, they were playing their usual mellow football, which could bring success mostly when the opposition was shaky. Still, the boys deserved the title, they fought to it, they won it. The joy was all theirs.