Vive la France

After all the excitement in the past 10-14 days of football all over Europe, Liverpool's 2 fantastic performances and Celtic winning the CIS cup, i'm gonna concentrate on French football this week, maybe educate some people in the process.

Olympique Lyonnais or Lyon have won the French League for the last 7 seasons under such coaches as Jacques Santini, Paul Le Guen, Gerard Houllier and Alan Perrin, this season under the guidance of highly regarded coach Claude Puel was meant to be a forgone conclusion with Lyon expected to win their 8th title in a row, Puel came from Northern France overachievers Lille OSC, who happen to be my 2nd favourite team in the world (more on that later) Puel guided Lille to a 2nd place finish in the league and twice to the Champions League getting to the Last 16 2 years ago.

Combined with Puel's talent and the cream of the talent they had brought in, Hugo Lloris, Ederson (Nice), Jean Alain Boumsong (Juventus), John Mensah (Rennes), Miralem Pjanic (Metz), and Jean Makoun from Puel's old club Lille, added to some of the best players in Europe not just France, this was meant to be a walkover, however it's not been easy sailing for Lyon, as of today they sit 1 point clear of Paris St Germain (PSG) and Marseille. with 6 points between the top 6, anything other than first place would be considered a disaster, and even though Puel is probably the best manager they've had since Le Guen surely he'd be sacked if the Championship was not resting at the Stade Gerland come the end of the season.

They started well winning 5 from the first 6, then a shock 3-0 defeat away to Rennes followed by a draw against Lille and Auxerre showed the cracks, in the 9 games that ended 2008 they only one 5, including 2 defeats.

2009 didn't get much better 2 draws from the first 3 games, then with 3 wins in a row everything looked to be back on track then in the last fortnight it's been a disaster for the Champions.

A 3-2 defeat against Lille in the Cup was followed by a high profile 2-0 defeat by Lille again at the Stade de France in a kind of carnival game classed as Lille's home game, the 2 Lille defeats were sandwiched by Barcelona knocking them out of the Champions League, and to top it off when returning to league duty at home they were shockingly defeated by lowly Auxerre 2-0.

The wheels seem to be coming off the Lyon train, will their previous Championship victories help them to keep their composure and lift their 8th consecutive title.

Now onto their title contenders, mainly PSG and Marseille.

PSG had a terrible season last year, keeping their place in the league on the last day, and everyone thought that mid table mediocrity would have been a good result, Portuguese legend Pauleta retired and all the pressure was on returning yougster Guillaume Hoarau, coming back from Le Havre where he helped them gain promotion, he was going to be the main target upfront, and how he has repaid the Parisians, 15 goals so far this season, combine this with the great play of Ludovic Giuly returning from his time in Italy, unknown Le Mans midfielder Stephane Sessegnon, and the return to form of well travelled striker Peguy Luyindula.

It is great to see such a big team with a fantastic history coming back to their glory days, not sure they will be able to keep up the pace, but woul dbe great to see it going to the last day, Hoarau needs to keep scoring though.

Marseille find themselves only 1 point behind, this is after a fantastic 3-1 victory over PSG at the Parc des Prices, PSG and Marseille have a very heated rivalry kind like the english North/South divide, with a win PSG would have went top, Marseille will have taken great pleasure in preventing PSG going top and also moving 1 point from top themselves.

The southern giants have had a up and down season, great start opened with a 4-4 Rennes, then winning 3 in a row, but followed that with 4 draws, the problem with Marseilles season is that every month if they win 3 games they'll always lose one, even worse between October and December they lost 3 games, each one at home in the Velodrome, games you should win if you want to win the league, but they have only lost 2 away games which is fantastic form, it's been the goal scoring of the trio Mamadou Niang, Bakari Kone and Hatem Ben Arfa.

Marseille have the better squad between them and PSG which is what you need for a season campaign, more experience in the spine of the team aswell.

Now for the last team to profile, it probably should be Toulouse or Bordeaux, but its the team much closer to my heart, Lille OSC, 100 miles north of Paris and 90 mins Eurostar trip away from London, you'll find the little hard working team from Lille.

They came to prominence when Claude Puel was in charge, they didn't get into Ligue 1 until the turn of the millenium, then in 2005 they finished 2nd and then 3rd in 2006, beating Man Utd at the Stade de France in their first campaign, 2nd time around, they beat Milan in the San Siro to reach the Last 16, they drew Man Utd again, and after a controversial 1-0 defeat in France they lost 1-0 at Old Trafford.

The defeat by Man U sparked a down turn in form and Lille finished 10th, and that Summer the players that made Lille great all left, 13 first team players left and it was a very young team that played next season and Lille did well to finish 7th, that was Claude Puel's last season and he moved to Lyon with influential midfielder Jean Makoun, for so long the Lille heartbeat.

New coach Rudy Garcia came in, he used to play for Lille and was impressive in his job at Le Mans, the expectations were getting higher again.

Now before I go onto Lille's performance this season, you may be asking yourself, why do you support Lille, well it's a strange stort, some of you may be aware of the game Pro Evolution Soccer, well it was PES5 where a canadian friend of my called Sina had spent his time using the ingame editor to correct all the french teams stats so they would truly reflect each player on each team, to improve the enjoyment of the game.

He asked each person on the forum to pick a team and play a few seasons, and report back your thought on the players to see if the stats truly reflected the players, I choose Lille cause at the time one of my housemates Lee's mum had gone to a football match in France, and I asked her to get me a scarf (I collect them). The scarf that came back was a Lille scarf, so as I had the scarf why not go them and learn something.

So from playing the game start to know the players and wanting to see the real life Lille I started to watch French foootball, and watched some Lille games, and liked what I saw, players such as Peter Odemwingie, Kader Keita, Jean Makoun, Gregory Tafforeau, Tony Sylva all made me fall in love with the Northerners.

2 years ago I planned a trip to Lille to watch them play Le Mans at the Lille Stade Metropole a small 18,000 stadium, the stadium is so small as they used to play in the 22,000 Stade Grimonprez Jooris, and it was knocked down to increase the capacity to 35,000 but as soon as the stadium was knocked down the council said the ground was their land and no work was to be done, so Lille had no stadium, so they moved to the Metropole until they could build a new stadium, this was in 2004 and only this month have they broke ground on the future 50,000 Stade Borne de l'Espoir.

My trip was planned for the 17th of March, and then on the 16th just as I was about to go to bed, it was brought to my attention that their had been a fire in London right next to the train line that the eurostar runs on, and all Eurostar trains for the next 24 hours had been suspended indeffinetly.

So the trip was off, i was gutted, so on St Paddy's day I went out and got wankered haha, Lille got beat 3-1, so maybe good not to have gone, I plan to go again next season, this will defintely happen.

So onto this season.

It was a very poor start, in the first 8 games, only 3 wins and 3 defeats, after this Lille went on a fantastic run, in the next 21 games only 3 defeats and 5 draws, drawing was Lille's undoing the last 2 seasons, highlights including beating St-Etienne 3-0, 1-0 away win to Nice, then in the space of a week beating Lyon twice, then beating Caen to move within 3 points of 2nd and 4 points of the lead.

The reasons for Lille's success this season is down to the play of some key young players, Michel Bastos in his third year is the top scored with 11 goals and 11 assists, Centre back Adil Rami has came to prominence, and super youngster Eden Hazard has burst on the scene with some eye opening performances, add to this one of the best midfields in France, Yohann Cabaye, Florent Balmont and Rio Mavuba are a hardworking but skillful trio and hard to break down.

The success is even better when you realise Lille's struggles upfront, young Kevin Mirallas moved to St-Etienne, and Tulio De Melo was brough back to France by his old coach to score the goals but he has been out most of the season with injury, journey man Pierre-Alain Frau got injured in the 2nd game out for 3 months, this put big pressure on Nicolas Fauvergue and Robert Vittek, and it also gave Hazard his chance which he grabbed with both hands, and now they have a genuine chance to finish 2nd or 3rd and reclaim a Champions League place, although I'd be happy with a Europa Cup place.

Well I hope you've learnt something about a league you might not have experience before and might keep a wee eye on the scores in the coming weeks, the smart money will be on Lyon holding on, but with 5 others team just 4 points away with 30 points still up for grabs, It's a long way to go.

Au revoir