Lemar, qu’on voit danser le long des… French football 2018-19

[ingoldale]

For Ligue 2, these numbers are huge indeed (especially on a Tuesday eve) but we’re talking about Lens here, so not exactly your average Ligue 2 club (over the last 10 yrs, the average attendance in Ligue 2 is 7,000 vs 30,000 for Lens so far this season).

But plenty of travelling supporters in the big Ligue 1 clubs (of a similar size to Lens), although obviously nowhere near on the same scale as in England or Germany*.

One big hurdle these last few years for travelling supporters in French football is that it’s become "fashionable" and hasty for the authorities to ban supporters en masse from travelling through arrêtés, decrees/orders (either via an arrêté préfectoral, a departmental order or via an arrêté municipal, a municipal by-law in England & Wales/a city ordinance in the US I think), so not through court or judicial decisions but purely from rulings that emanate either from the préfet, the representative of the Interior ministry in a department, or from local mayors and that can be therefore seen as arbitrary (these arrêtés can however be ruled illegal later by a court of law, in this case the Conseil d’État, ordinary citizens/supporters’ associations etc. can refer the matter to this Conseil d’État).

There’s been a worrying increase of those barely legal blanket bans that target everybody instead of the few fuckwits who caused the problems in the first place. Football supporters don’t generally have a good name so a) this issue is rarely mentioned in the media b) all supporters end up being tarred with the same brush by the general public so there’s little support for the majority of decent fans who want to follow their club away and get hit by that collective FBO.

This is regularly denounced in the quality French football media, particularly the one I used to write for, Les Cahiers du Football. This lawyer for instance, Pierre Barthélémy, is very active on this front, https://twitter.com/pierre_b_y?lang=en, also: BOULOGNE BOYS, AUTHENTIKS... PIERRE BARTHÉLEMY DÉFEND LES PESTIFÉRÉS DU PARC, L'AVOCAT DES ULTRAS DU PSG

Barthélémy, who has written many articles in Les Cahiers on this particular topic, is a PSG supporter in his late thirties who defends, pro bono, PSG supporters caught in a justice system that neither understands football very well nor the supporters’ culture and even less naturally the many nuances within fandom. So what you have is too many overzealous judges, procureurs (~Crown Prosecution Service lawyers) and avocats généraux (~public prosecutors) who can be overly repressive towards supporters in general, especially against the Ultras, whereas of course, many ultras are not brainless morons hell bent on violence, far from it.

Football : "c'est devenu la mode" de prendre des arrêtés d'interdiction de déplacement des supporteurs



[*Not 100% sure about Germany, so I need a Bundesliga expert’s help here. How many fans would an average club like, say Hertha Berlin, take to Bremen – 400 kms away – or Munich, 600 kms away for instance? Is it in the 100s or 1000s?]

As you said, nowhere near the sizes of England, Germany or Scotland but Lens numbers are impressive in Ligue 2 by even Ligue 1 standards from my experience. Aside from the big matches versus ASSE (Lyon, PSG, Marseille), I don't recall any teams getting beyond the 100s. Bastia and Monaco always brought decent numbers mind. I remember Bastia bring 150 or so to Clermont for a league game. Lorient once brought 8 to a match which was then abandoned after about 10 minutes at Geoffroy-Guichard.

[ursus arctos]

I always assumed that some of Bastia's away support was comprised of Corsicans living away from the island, but near the location of the match in question. It's a phenomenon that is even more common with southern Italian clubs, including those from both Sicily and Sardinia.

[Pérou Flaquettes]

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[Pérou Flaquettes]

As you said, nowhere near the sizes of England, Germany or Scotland but Lens numbers are impressive in Ligue 2 by even Ligue 1 standards from my experience. Aside from the big matches versus ASSE (Lyon, PSG, Marseille), I don't recall any teams getting beyond the 100s. Bastia and Monaco always brought decent numbers mind. I remember Bastia bring 150 or so to Clermont for a league game. Lorient once brought 8 to a match which was then abandoned after about 10 minutes at Geoffroy-Guichard.

I think we’re essentially saying the same thing, except that I would say that the support away from home for clubs comparable in size to Lens as I wrote, is higher than what you seem to think, large clubs taking 800-1,000 fans away is relatively common, maybe it doesn’t happen every weekend but it’s frequent. I think the rise of the Ultra movement in France in the last decade or so, the fact it’s better organised than before, more accessible (clubs help sometimes) etc. has contributed to that, to more supporters travelling away (and bearing in mind too that playing on Saturday night makes it more difficult for supporters to travel several hundred miles away). Smaller clubs too sometimes can take big contingents away, occasionally 1000s for big league occasions such as the example below with Amiens to Reims (Ligue 2). There are many variables of course, it depends on distances, days of the week etc.

A few random examples that I’ve just found after a quick trawl of the Net (all League matches):

(2018) Plus de 1000 supporters lillois à Toulouse ?

(2017) Entre 6000 et 8000 supporters amiénois attendus à Reims pour Reims-Amiens (Ligue 2)

(2017) 1000 supporters de l’OM attendus à Strasbourg

(2017) OM : 1000 supporters attendus à Montpellier

(2016) 800 supporters bordelais au Stadium de Toulouse

(2016) Près de 1000 supporters stéphanois à Bordeaux pour la reprise de Ligue 1

(2016) Plus de 1000 supporters Lyonnais à Reims

(2015) 1000 Rennais au Parc des Princes

(2015) Plus de 1000 supporters Lensois à Saint-Étienne

(2014) Au moins 2000 supporters de Lyon à Nice ! https://www.leprogres.fr/football/20...de-l-ol-a-nice

(2014)

(2014) Olympique Marseille: 1000 supporters à Nantes

(2013) 1000 Marseillais à Rennes. Guy Cazadamont, nous le rappelait hier : "On a toujours rempli la tribune visiteurs à Rennes."

(2010) 1000 supporters marseillais à Chaban-Delmas. Comme tous les ans, le « pèlerinage » à Bordeaux est très suivi.

(2007) 1000 à 1500 supporters niçois sont annoncés du côté de Gerland

(2006) 1 500 Lyonnais au Parc des Princes

As I also wrote, big crackdown on supporters travelling this last decade, that hasn’t helped obviously, it's affected OM and PSG supporters in particular but many more (the Twitter feed that I gave of that lawyer P. Barthélémy is full of such examples), the supporters of many big clubs regularly find themselves under a travelling ban, or restrictions, there's probably been 100s of such cases over the last decade in Ligue 1, well even before (if you remember for instance the problems caused by some PSG ultras pre Plan Leproux in 2010, they were often banned from travelling, it was even worse than now). For instance:

(2018): ASSE - PSG : seuls 300 supporters parisiens pourront se déplacer à Geoffroy-Guichard.

(2017) Given the high risk of fan trouble in the southern city, local authorities in Marseille have banned Saint-Etienne supporters from attending the game.

(2017) Seulement 500 supporters du Stade Malherbe autorisés à Rennes

(2017) about 1,000 Marseille supporters were allowed to travel to Geoffroy Guichard

(2017) ASSE-OGC Nice : 300 supporters niçois autorisés à Geoffroy-Guichard. Le préfet de la Loire vient de prendre un arrêté qui limite l’accès à Geoffroy-Guichard pour les Niçois lors de la rencontre du samedi 5 aout


(2016) Les supporters parisiens interdits de stade à Saint-Etienne

(2016) Les supporters parisiens interdits pour OM/PSG. La préfecture de police des Bouches-du-Rhône a publié un arrêté préfectoral interdisant le déplacement des supporters parisiens pour le prochain OM/PSG.

etc.

[Pérou Flaquettes]

Lorient once brought 8 to a match which was then abandoned after about 10 minutes at Geoffroy-Guichard.

Those 5 or 8 Lorient/Le Havre/Metz/Bastia/Dijon etc. away supporters travelling to the other side of France to support their team has been an occasional feature of the Canal Football Club programme or Téléfoot for years, they love to show pics of "3 pelés et un tondu" (one man and his dog) waving their little banner in their parcage exter (away section). Total respect to them!

[ursus arctos]

Tough start for Vahid.

Nantes 2-0 down at Bordeaux within eight minutes.

[Pérou Flaquettes]

I can just imagine the "remontée de bretelles des familles" (hellish hair-dryer treatment) in the Nantes dressing-room at half-time if the scoreline remains the same.

[Pérou Flaquettes]

Oh dear... superb Bordeaux move down the left

[Pérou Flaquettes]

This is how it’s done lads:

https://twitter.com/FCNantes/status/1048243667473915904

[Pérou Flaquettes]

Impressive start to the season from Lille, 19 points after 9 games, 2nd behind PSG (24 pts/8 games) who could slip up tonight vs Lyon if the Gones turn up.

Galtier’s doing a good job at LOSC (as you'd expect) after a difficult first season there (or half a season I should say as he arrived in December post Bielsa’s fuckwittery), and what a great performance from their duo Jonathan Bamba (22, attacking midfielder)-Nicolas Pépé (23, right winger, very creative and fast), already 13 goals & 5 assists between them in the league and apparently superb again last night vs a decent but overrun Saint-Étienne (3-1). Galtier clearly knew what he was getting with Bamba, having had him under his wing at Saint-Étienne for so long, he got him on a free too (well, not completely free, Bamba got €4 million as a sign-on fee and a generous salary, about €200K a month, leaving Saint-Étienne unable to compete on that front).

Lille received plenty of offers for Pépé in the close season, from Lyon, Spain and England (up to €35 million), but they turned them all down to keep him (13 league goals last season, his second in the top flight). I can’t see him staying at Lille beyond this year, he might even leave this winter. No European competition this season for Lille so they could well qualify for the Champions’ League, but they'll need to keep their best players for that to materialise, there's already rumours that Lille could be offered €60m for Pépé in December if he continues to impress.

[ursus arctos]

Pépé is under contract for four more seasons, so les Dogues will at least get full value for him. That said, I would much prefer to see him stay for the whole season.

[Pérou Flaquettes]

Paris (rightly) down to 10 men vs Lyon with an hour left. 1-0 to Paris but Lyon are holding their own and have been a little profligate. They should really capitalise now with that numerical advantage.

[Toby Gymshorts]

Lyon also down to 10 after a fairly innocuous looking challenge on Mbappe.

[Pérou Flaquettes]

Oh well, bang goes Lyon's chance to beat PSG then (didn't see Tousart's foul just before half-time - second yellow - but there's been more than a few GBH tackles in this game).

[Pérou Flaquettes]

Lyon sort of piled forward after the break with a view to scoring and stealing a march on PSG. You could say it backfired at the hour mark, they've just conceded 4 goals in 15 minutes (all scored by Mbappé).

[Toby Gymshorts]

That escalated quickly.

[ursus arctos]

National protests by supporters' groups against repressive policies and action for the next two match days.

PSG's Ultras will remain silent for the first 15 minutes of their match.

https://twitter.com/Co_Ultras_Paris/status/1053031101864861697?s=19

[Pérou Flaquettes]

It echoes what I was explaining in my post #72 two weeks ago about supporters being utterly fed up with a worrying increase in the last years of this repressive knee-jerk reaction from the authorities to blanket-ban supporters & travelling fans in stadiums and the increase too of games being played behind closed doors (sometimes justified of course but increasingly not, often seen by the authorities – police, préfectures – as the easy solution rather than the fair one).

http://sport24.lefigaro.fr/le-scan-s...e-week-end.php

Les différentes associations de supporters estiment que la répression a franchi un nouveau cap cette saison avec la multiplication abusive des arrêtés préfectoraux et arrêtés ministériels de restriction ou d'interdiction totale des déplacements.

[…]

La saison passée, 86 arrêtés préfectoraux et 9 arrêtés ministériels pour 31 interdictions totales de déplacement ont été prononcés. En trois mois cette saison, 15 arrêts préfectoraux et 2 arrêtés ministériels de restriction ou d'interdiction totale de déplacement ont déjà impacté les associations de supporters.

Les supporters de Ligue 1 vont faire une grève générale des chants ce week-end

https://twitter.com/A_N_Supporters/status/1052220164710780930

Funny translation of "fans" (as in supporters) from this Greek website. Yep, they’ve translated it as "ventilateurs", as in Dyson fans… (they being Google Translate of course).

https://twitter.com/A_N_Supporters/status/1052512384118640641

[ursus arctos]

[Pérou Flaquettes]

Nightmaresque start indeed for his déniaisage as a manager. Lots of players unavailable (Subasic, Raggi, Lopes etc.) + the Monégasque Grandsir sent off just after the hour mark + Falcao limping off injured in the 36th minute (hamstring, so likely to face 3-4 weeks out).

In unrelated "I've found a canny way to top up my meagre income as a professional footballer" news, this: (from https://www.ouest-france.fr/pays-de-...querie-6026949 and https://www.lequipe.fr/Football/Actu...uerie/951581):

Ex Ligue 1 striker (Nantes, Rennes) Ismaël Bangoura has been playing in Saudi since January 2016, presumably not for free although he swore blind to the investigators that he's a great believer in the Ludere Causa Ludendi philosophy ("L’intéressé prétend avoir exercé en Arabie Saoudite à titre « bénévole », en qualité d’amateur."… but of course loads of photos & footage of him playing in the professional Saudi league) but was still claiming the generous French jobseekers’ allowance and (occasionally) attending Pôle Emploi (French job centre agency) interviews claiming to be looking for a job.

Managed to rob €141,000 off Pôle emploi in 2 years from March 2016 to March 2018. It only took a full two years for the fine fleur of the Pôle Emploi investigation branch to realise that they were being conned. They should really employ more football specialists in there, they’d quickly have realised that he was banging in the goals for Al-Raed in the Saudi Pro League.

He was fined €131,000 with a six-month suspended jail sentence and his main residence was seized too. He got off very lightly there IMO.

[Pérou Flaquettes]

Oh dear, that howler from the Monaco (third) keeper…

https://www.lfp.fr/video/84709/resume

[Pérou Flaquettes]

Little focus on Montpellier as they're sitting pretty in third. Montpellier are unbeaten in the last 9 league games (out of 10), very clinical on Saturday vs Bordeaux (2-0):

https://www.lfp.fr/video/84703/resume

I’m pleased for the manager Michel Der Zakarian, underrated IMO, they seem to have recruited clever this summer.

The Héraultais are most interesting this year, cohesive, solid and good on the counter-attack, with a sort of Les Bleus style, dogged, aggressive in a positive way, with a mean streak, not tons of possession but very good at hitting on the break, a quick and clinical unit, with lots of players who have “les crocs” (who are hungry).

Very solid and experienced defence (have only conceded 7 goals, best defence behind PSG), with Daniel Congré and Portuguese centre-back Pedro Mendes who, at 28, got his first Portuguese cap vs Scotland at Hampden Park a week ago, in the absence of José Fonte. And of course Brazilian tackler extraordinaire centre-back Vitorino Hilton, at Montpellier since 2011. Christ, I knew Hilton was no spring chicken but I hadn’t realised that he is 41, the man’s indestructible.

https://twitter.com/MontpellierHSC/status/1040140542049505280

Good midfield too, with the excellent and aptly named Florent Mollet (= calf) who works tirelessly, overlooked in the past and unable to really shine in sub-standard clubs so he too has the bit between the teeth.

Also Tunisian defensive midfielder Ellyes Skhiri, 23, over 100 games for Montpellier and really coming into his own this season. Junior Sambia, 21, looks good too, strong and versatile. Paul Lasne (29, at Montpellier since 2014) has started the season well too.

Damien Le Tallec (brother of Anthony Le Tallec, ex Liverpool & Sunderland), very impressive so far this season and another man with a point to prove, he’s back in France after a 6-year long exile in Eastern Europe (Ukraine, Russia, Serbia) and 2 yrs at Dortmund II before a brief stint at Nantes in 2012. Nobody really remembers him in France and he clearly has fire in his belly.

Up front, 24-y-old Gaëtan Laborde, a bruiser of a centre-forward new to the club, from Bordeaux, he’s done well so far (he’s the player who triggered that explosive rant from Gustavo Poyet in August during a press conference – according to Poyet, he was transferred to Montpellier behind his back, not quite what happened according to insiders – Gus was sacked the following day). Unlucky at Bordeaux who messed him around for years loaning him out and never giving him a proper chance so he, too, is keen to impress.

Andy Delort, 27 (briefly played for Wigan a few yrs ago), excellent too upfront this year too, 4 goals in the last 4 games. I like Delort, he’s one of the few gypsies in French football and he sometimes speaks up for his community. He is barking mad and a complete idiot sometimes (when drunk, natch – we’ll all been there I presume, well, I have), he should really know better but he wears his heart on his sleeve, always plays out of his skin and doesn’t give much of a shit, very refreshing. He was transferred to Tigres UANL in Mexico in 2016 for €8 million (after an excellent Ligue 1 season) and played alongside gypsy pal French international André-Pierre Gignac and lived la vida loca over there (and pocketed €200,000 a month) but came back to France 5 months later in Feb. 2017 after being unable to deliver, too much competition and too little game time. Flopped at Toulouse last year and he’s also clearly got the “seum” (slang for “angry”) and will want to prove people wrong.

https://twitter.com/AndyDelort9/status/746289231727828992

I know Montpellier reasonably well, I have relatives there and was even there this summer for a few days. Unfortunately, I had to leave the day before they played Saint-Étienne at home to go to a family reunion on the Côte D’Azur (but it was a dismal 0-0 anyway so no regrets), big gypsy community there, about 12,000 in the Montpellier area alone, and many more in the nearby Camargue area, they’ll be pleased with Delort in the team even if it’s not a big football city, lots of top-flight or professional men's and women’s clubs there too (rugby, handball, volley-ball, basket-ball, ice hockey, squash etc.*)

However, they haven’t yet played any “grosse écurie” (the big guns) but they’ll host Marseille in 2 weeks so we'll see what they’re made of. But if they don’t get too many injuries and their best players stay till May 2019, they could be this season’s surprise package, I hope so.


[*And according to ursus, they have tons of sex too, explains the low gates I suppose]

[ursus arctos]

At some point in the 90s, the Nouvel Obs ran a cover story on how the residents of Montpellier had more sex than anyone else in France.

[ursus arctos]

PF, your post referencing Cahiers du Football and the interest of French publishers in "intelligent" football books raised some questions for me.

Now that Cahiers is on-line only, there isn't really a French equivalent of 11 Freunde ,Panenka or Offside, is there? So Foot would be the obvious candidate, but while its format clearly owes a lot to 11 Freunde, i have found the content to be less intriguing, perhaps because of what I've perceived as a focus on big names and big clubs.

It's also interesting to me that Italy has yet to come to close to producing anything of this genre (though there are quite a few "intelligent" football books).

[Pérou Flaquettes]

I used to know the French sites scene well (many have shut though) but I’m a little disconnected these days since I stopped writing for Les Cahiers in 2015.

Les Cahiers are still the reference site though, going strong since 1998, several of their regular writers also write for Le Monde, Libé etc. (now a mag BTW, La Revue des Cahiers, #1 was released last May, I think #2 is this month, not sure).

Footballski.fr (Eastern European football) is worth checking out too, I haven't read much from them but what I've read was excellent. There are other non-mainstream ones but can’t quite remember quite what they are now.

I once contacted France Football and L'Équipe circa 2011-12 when they had 5 or 6 interesting blogs going on their site (one was absolutely fantastic, it was called "Une autre histoire du foot" was very much like the magazine Backpass, vintage stuff about French football, the writer was Didier Braun), to try to get them to be a little more daring etc. both on their site and I got a reply from the then football editor, Thierry Marchand, but I got nowhere. They’re excellent for certain things but very mainstream. Most of these FF and L'Équipe blogs have gone now.