Essential The Official Football (Soccer) Thread - It's Amad World

Liu Kang

Liu Kang

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phcitywarrior said:
This is what I don’t get about French football, there seems to be so much variation across the clubs in terms of who’s challenging at the top end of the table.

PSG is really the only constant at the top. Monaco, Lille, OM, Lyon all flip flop. Bordeaux and Montepellier were champs at one point, now they’re midtable…

I need an explanation.
Click to expand...
There are several factors.
Historically, French football (club and NT) underachieved big time pre-90s (when footy went global). Our history was filled with Ls we took and how beautifully we lost. Stade de Reims losing to Madrid in the 50s, Ste Etienne losing to Bayern in the 70s, the NT losing to Germany in the 80s (filled with those legendary Bordeaux players and 3x BO Platini... but were besting Brazil though), the NT losing to Bulgaria etc. Even Marseille losing to Milan the first time plagued French football. Like the Spanish NT pre-2008, we were beautiful losers every time, the only success really was 1984 Euro won against... Spain:russ:

The issue is that all the legendary clubs built their rep and attractiveness prior to the 90's and if you compare French clubs against the Dutch, the Portuguese or the Russians who are smaller than us, we have way way less silverware compared to Ajax, Benfica, Porto or Kiev for example.

Tapie managed to build Marseille (and we know how) but that was in the 90s already and OM couldnt stay consistent at the top once he left. PSG was also good in the 90s but lack of vision from the owners and hooliganism almost killed it and it took Qatar to save it.

Also, most of our great players became that way abroad. Kopa, Zidane, Platini, Henry etc really ascended when they left France even though they were playing in clubs that had history in France. Even the ones in the tier below like Cantona, Thuram, Benz, Makelele and them got elite abroad.

I would say only Papin, Tigana, Giresse and Fontaine really stayed there and built their rep but they are not on the first tier. If you look at other countries, the top English players all built themselves in England (except maybe Lineker and Waddle but are they seen in the same way as Charlton or Matthews ? I dont know), same with Italians or Germans who built themselves at home.

So young players grow up looking up to foreign clubs because our greats mostly played elsewhere and the great Euro clubs are all foreign. This means one thing : Ligue 1 has been a feeder league no matter how many talents we have. In the last 25 years, our NT is probably the best footy team in the world resume-wise (2x WC, 1x Euro, 1x WC final, 1x Euro final) and our league is still trash :mjlol:

Taxes are also a factor but I wrote enough already.
 
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