What's Your Strategy When Paris Saint-Germain Completely Distort the League?
On Sunday night, as the clock gets ready to strike 9 p.m. local time, the 22 elected starters of Olympique de Marseille and Paris Saint-Germain will take the field at Stade Velodrome.
It will be the 92nd time France's two biggest clubs have played one another, and in many senses, it will be a familiar scene of bubbling malevolence and bitter rivalry—an atmosphere of such a strong flavour, in fact, that it will take place in front of an entirely partisan audience after the local prefecture's police refused to admit away supporters, per RTL (in French).
Yet the title under which the match is played—Le Classique, or Le Classico—doesn't quite detail what has happened to the rivalry in recent years. The last time Marseille finished victorious was in the November 2011 meeting at the Velodrome.
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Since then, they have met on 14 occasions in Ligue 1, the Coupe de La Ligue and Coupe de France. PSG have won 12 and drawn the other two: one in October 2012, a pulsating 2-2 draw at the Velodrome in which Andre-Pierre Gignac and Zlatan Ibrahimovic exchanged braces, and the other at the Parc des Princes almost exactly a year ago on Rudi Garcia's managerial debut, when the new coach set his team up to neutralise. In a goalless draw, OM didn't muster so much as a shot on target.
That was seen by some as a moral victory. For many others, it was a de facto humiliation. Rather than going toe-to-toe with their greatest rivals—even for just one night—Marseille had been reduced to piling furniture up against a deadbolted door to keep the wolves out. The club's motto, Droit Au But (straight to goal), seemed to have been left on the team bus.
The reality of that game, and of OM's terrible run in Le Classique since 2011, is part of today's French football landscape. The weight of history has been superseded by PSG's financial power and their success in building outright sporting domination through those means.
That much is understood at Marseille, and in the year since he took over the ownership of the club, American businessman Frank McCourt has pledged significant sums as part of what his regime calls the OM Champions Project.
In October 2016, on inking his deal to purchase the club, McCourt pledged €200 million (£179 million) to be invested over the first four years, per L'Equipe (in French)—a figure that, after PSG's successful pursuits of Neymar and Kylian Mbappe, looks modest.
The other major problem for OM has been attracting those top-line stars. Having the money is one thing, but convincing potential recruits your project is for real is something else entirely. So while they started by looking at recruiting Diego Godin and Iker Muniain, as per L'Equipe (via Lucile Alard of Eurosport, in French), they ended up with the likes of Aymen Abdennour and Valere Germain. Quality players, both. But neither is at an elite level nor an up-and-coming talent.
The phrasing of the Champions Project has somewhat inevitably been thrown back in their faces after every defeat, but Garcia's appointment has at least given their efforts to move in the right direction a degree of know-how and credibility. They have already ruled out competing with PSG financially for any of the pretenders, so strategy has to be king.
That has been the case with AS Monaco, and they proved it could be done last season, beating the capital club to the title while also making a more significant dent (both in terms of hearts and minds) in the UEFA Champions League. With their struggles in recent weeks, particularly in the European arena, it's hard not to look at the principality squad as victims of their own success given they were picked off in the summer's transfer market.
Their time will come again, though. Even if owner Dmitry Rybolovlev's pending legal issues may make the atmosphere around the club a little twitchy, Monaco's modus operandi is unlikely to change. They trade, but they trade well.
Monaco coach Leonardo Jardim knows it's about sitting tight. As well as making a substantial profit in the summer's dealings, they restocked with talent such as Stevan Jovetic, Keita Balde and Youri Tielemans. These players may not have made an immediate impact, but they are money in the bank for later. Not forgetting the actual money in the bank that can go towards added investment.
That's what Olympique Lyonnais president Jean-Michel Aulas pledged for his team at the start of the month to Le Progres (via Alexandre Jaquin of RMC Sport, in French), committing to buying the requisite talent to win back the French title and to finally nail a first European trophy.
The seven-time French champions are on a similar track to Monaco, having sold big in the shape of crown jewels Alexandre Lacazette and Corentin Tolisso in the summer, as well as the experienced Maxime Gonalons and Mathieu Valbuena.
Lyon's play has also been to invest in potential, and the early signs suggest that Bertrand Traore, Mariano Diaz and Ferland Mendy are gambles that will pay off, even if results and performances are uneven for now. The championship—and its leaders—may seem like a dot in the distance, but PSG still have major squad trimming to do, and their focus is inevitably drawn to the Champions League ahead of domestic matters. Like Monaco, Lyon know time is on their side.
PSG's effect on Ligue 1 isn't just about finding the means to compete directly with them. For some, it's already about realising the league is polarised and that the scramble for Champions League places is likely to be more open and intense than ever.
With that in mind, a few clubs are looking to superstar coaches, with equivalent players inaccessible to them, just as Lille did with Marcelo Bielsa—and Nantes, who went big to bring Claudio Ranieri back to France. The jury is still out on the 2010/11 double-winners' recruitment, based largely on young imports from South America, but Ranieri's organisational skills are already apparent.
Nantes played at Lille on the opening weekend of the season and were soundly beaten, 3-0. Ranieri bemoaned the lack of playing resources available to him at that point, and you had to feel sympathy. Even post-partial makeover, there's no exceptional quality at his disposal (and the club lost its best player, Amine Harit, before the season began). Nantes' fifth-place position owes everything to the joint-best defensive record in the division, which in turn is down to the coach.
Sunday's instalment of Le Classique may well not inspire hopes of a title race this season. If anything, it's an occasion that has inspired PSG of late, with them storming to a 5-1 win on their most recent visit to the Velodrome.
Yet whatever one thinks of Nasser Al-Khelaifi's club, it is one with a strong sense of its history—and PSG will ensure that this rivalry endures while the rest of Ligue 1's teams labour in their wake.
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