Do you remember the (not) good old days when we laughed at a Ligue 1 as exciting as a tax notice, with 0-0 galore and cacochymic attackers? At the heart of the 2000s, the championship was painfully running at an average of two goals per game and in 2006-2007, Pauleta finished “pichichi” with 15 small pawns, a record for poverty.
Inflation is sometimes good, since this season after 31 days, the late “Farmers League” proudly displays 2.83 goals per game, and nine players have already reached or exceeded the bar of 15 achievements. Unheard of since the Giscard era, more precisely since 1977-1978, according to Opta: nine also at this stage, 13 at the end of the championship with Carlos Bianchi (PSG, 37), Delio Onnis (Monaco, 29) and Nenad Bjekovic ( Nice, 29) in the lead.
“There are phenomena, like Onnis, underlines Guy Lacombe, the former coach of Rennes and PSG who evolved alongside the top scorer in the history of the first division (299 achievements) in Tours. When you have players like that, you know that at any time they can unlock a situation for you, and you play for them. Look today: a PSG with or without Mbappé, it’s not the same team. »
The Balogun Surprise
The “League of talents” is therefore not just a simple slogan laid down by the creative people of the LFP, which Alain Casanova confirms. “There is a concentration of talent that we had not had for years”, judges the former technician of the TFC and Lens, who notably launched the Wissam Ben Yedder machine in the deep end.
“Many teams have an attacking game plan and they often rely on a goalscorer who makes the difference, whereas a few years ago they relied more on three or four players, he adds. Well, Paris is an exception. Mbappé and Messi are expected to score 20 or 25 goals, and again Neymar is absent. Wissam’s consistency over the years is exceptional. I’m more surprised by Balogun [prêté par Arsenal à Reims], which no one expected at this level. »
A new generation of more offensive coaches
Alexandre Lacazette has returned to Lyon as if nothing had happened, after a five-year exile at Arsenal, while Canadian Jonathan David has long since made people forget the 1980s duo-based jokes that surrounded his debut in the North, in 2020.
Like Lacombe and Casanova, former striker Frédéric Piquionne testifies to the individual quality of his heirs. He also insists on the audacious spirit of a new generation of coaches (Haise, Still, Digard, Le Bris…). “The game is much more open, underlines the consultant on Prime Video. Systems with a three-man defense result in more goals and allow the central striker, and even the flank forwards, to perform better. The median or low blocks hardly exist anymore. »
From there to speak of “jogo bonito” from Brest to Ajaccio, there is a step that we will avoid crossing. But it’s a fact: the philosophy of play has changed, and it comes a long way according to Guy Lacombe, well placed when discussing the subject, since he supervised the training of coaches at the FFF. “I had noticed that we were very attached to the exercise we were doing, but that we trivialized the finish, which was strange. Today, everyone has realized this. We put more and more people in the opposing area to complete the action, as Lens does for example. »
This season, Ligue 1 outperforms even its most prestigious European competitors. In the Premier League, “only” five players, the ultraterrestrial Haaland in the lead (32 goals) have jumped the 15-goal mark, against only one in Serie A (Osimhen, 21), La Liga (Lewandowski, 17) and the Bundesliga (Füllkrug, 17).
However, this is not what will make our UEFA index rise, and this flattering statistic perhaps hides a truth which is less so, as Casanova advances. “If certain strikers who play in England or Italy were in our league, wouldn’t they be among the players with more than 15 goals? At Arsenal, Balogun would surely not play. “The former TFC coach, after a career as a goalkeeper, would also tend to think that the general level of goalkeepers and defenses in France “has already been higher”.
A change of mindset
“But regardless of the goalkeeper or the defenders in front, Messi, Mbappé or Wissam [Ben Yedder] will still be just as effective,” he immediately adds. Always a question of talent, which France manages to train or import thanks to its large pool and either clever or unrestrained recruitment (the PSG, randomly), in order to compensate for the exodus of a Randal Kolo Muani yesterday, and a Jonathan David tomorrow.
Frédéric Piquionne advances an additional argument to explain this flowering of prolific scorers: “In modern football, you need stats, that is to say, for an attacker, decisive passes and goals, observes the globetrotter of years 2000 and 2010. With the price of transfers and salary inflation, players have become aware of this. Without a stat, you stay on a normal salary. Attackers have become much more killer, much more selfish. »
According to Piquionne, the famous data would have changed the nature of football and its practitioners, even if they did not appear yesterday morning in the landscape. “Yes, they were there, but we also saw what the player could bring to the side: helping the block to come back up, the game with his back to goal, the deviations from the head, the substitution runs or to do the pressing. Sometimes, with all this effort, I lacked lucidity in front of goal. »
To stick to the current Parisian stars (but not only), it is certain that the fallback work only concerns them from afar. Which is as much juice saved at the time of conclusion and inflating the statistics.