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Champions Lille face testing summer
When Lille previously won the Ligue 1 title in 1954, UEFA was still some weeks away from being formed. Next season, the northerners and their bank manager will be reaping the benefits of UEFA's cash-swamped Champions League as French champions once again, a virtual lifetime of 57 years since they were last able to lay claim to that proud moniker.
No other club's fans have had to wait as long between top-flight titles, but - like the proverbial bus - Lille's supporters have been rewarded with two pieces of silverware in a single campaign. A week after securing the French Cup against Paris Saint-Germain, Rudi Garcia's men drew at PSG to clinch the title, and a first Double since 1946. The best team doesn't always win, but at least this season, it did.
"We've done something rare," gushed Garcia, whose side became the 16th French Double winners. "When I look at the names of the players and coaches in those teams, I find it difficult to realise that I'm there too with my team."
Garcia, an attacking midfielder in his day, has gone about winning the title the right way, bucking the stereotype of the clean sheet-obsessed Ligue 1 coach to - if not play with complete abandon - at least entertain the footballing public significantly more than his uber-cautious colleagues. Lille outscored the rest of the division for the second successive season, and played - along with purist Christian Gourcuff's Lorient - the most attractive football, with their 4-3-3 formation allowing front trio Moussa Sow, Gervinho and the tantalisingly-talented Eden Hazard to run foot loose and fancy free.
Like the capricious weather in Lille, though, clouds are rapidly moving up onto the horizon. It seems that no sooner the Ligue 1 title was won, than the squad are looking to cash in on themselves. Some key players, such as re-born duo Rio Mavuba and Mickael Landreau, have inked contract extensions, but jewel-in-the-crown Hazard may leave - "I want to play in the Champions League with Lille or a big club," he said last week - despite having recently penned a new deal, while Gervinho is feverishly looking to pack away the 15 goals and ten assists he registered this season and smuggle them across the Channel.
None-shall-pass centre-back Adil Rami, who had built a solid partnership with Cameroon international Aurelien Chedjou, had already bailed out in January by agreeing a move to Valencia while French international midfielder Yohan Cabaye has just joined Newcastle. But with the Champions League set to demand even more of a limited squad - Garcia used 22 players this season, the fewest of any Ligue 1 coach - Lille need to staunch the blood-letting.
The departures of Gabriel Heinze and Lucho Gonzalez, desperately below-par this season, are more understandable at Marseille, though the recent declarations of their coach, Didier Deschamps, suggest something more sinister may be afoot on the south coast. "I'm thinking things over," said 'DD', who has a €3 million release clause that expires on June 15 and is reportedly keen on a move to Roma. "I'm waiting to see the roadmap [for the club's future]. I'm ambitious. I've got room to manoeuvre with my contract up to a certain date."
Heinze's parting shot that he had been brought in by Deschamps, and that "the project is not going to continue" suggests the board feel the 1998 World Cup-winning captain has passed his 'best before' date anyway. Though they mathematically ran Lille close, the defending champions were largely underwhelming, and the three successive 2-2 draws - against Lorient, Valenciennes and Caen - with which they whimpered to a finish were symptomatic of a campaign that failed to capture the imagination. Andre Ayew was the one OM player to emerge with his reputation enhanced, the son of Abedi Pele showing up big-money buy Andre-Pierre Gignac, whose inability to adapt to life in the Velodrome spotlight was excruciatingly painful.
Gignac's unsightly odyssey carried a Parental Guidance rating compared to the X-rated gore fest at Stade Gerland, where Lyon - despite their best efforts - managed to grab a place in the Champions League. A slow start to the season meant Claude Puel, already on rocky ground, was under pressure and criticism from the off, and Ligue 1's best-paid coach - at some €250,000-a-month - is unlikely to endure a repeat of the death threats he received this season with his final year of his contract set to be paid up.
Auxerre coach Jean Fernandez and ex-Marseille boss Eric Gerets are touted as likely replacements for Puel, but they would inherit a jaded squad. Even the usually silent Hugo Lloris has declared his need "for time to look at the project" while a coach who can make Yoann Gourcuff a useful footballer once again would be welcome with the artful playmaker more pig's ear than silk purse in his first season at OL.
Reconstruction has been Robin Leproux's watchword this season, and after finally cleaning up the Parc des Princes terraces, the ambitious PSG president wants the team to polish up their act on the pitch, publicly ranting about the players' attitude after a late season defeat at Bordeaux handed Lyon the initiative in the race to reach the Champions League.
The arrival of solid goalkeeper Nicolas Douchez on a free transfer from Rennes means - sadly - the laughs provoked by Apoula Edel's regular comedy gaffes will be heard no more, Bordeaux's Alou Diarra, formerly of Liverpool and Bayern Munich, looks likely to replace Claude Makelele, and Lorient's excellent Kevin Gameiro may also be drafted in to significantly strengthen a squad limited in size if not quality.
Coach Antoine Kombouare moaned continually of his players being tired, and the manner in which their season petered out, with just four points from their last five matches, added credence to his complaints and cost the club Champions League football.
While Sochaux surprised on the strength of Marvin Martin's incisive final ball, and the finishing of 30-goal duo Modibo Maiga and Brown Ideye - "We're behind the four big guns. It was unthinkable at the start of the season," said incredulous coach Francis Gillot, whose team had finished two places above the drop zone in 2009-10 - early frontrunners Rennes faded to finish behind Gillot's neat-and-tidy team with the Breton club's decision to allow three major forwards to leave last summer finally - and unsurprisingly - proving an irreparable folly.
Fittingly at Bordeaux, part of their Stade Chaban-Delmas was closed after cracks appeared and there were fears it would collapse. The team proved equally brittle under Jean Tigana, who had already tried to resign once before finally achieving something this season by successfully quitting after seeing Les Girondins - champions in 2008-09 - stripped bare 4-0 at home by Sochaux.
Though on the face of it they finished a respectable seventh, Bordeaux were 25 points off top spot, and just seven clear of the relegation zone. With captain Diarra and Benoit Tremoulinas likely to leave, former greats such as Wendel out of form and favour, the new man at the helm, most likely Paul Le Guen, has quite a job on his hands.
The same can be said of Monaco, who joined Lens and the laughable Arles-Avignon in dropping into Ligue 2. Hardly the kind of early wedding present Prince Albert would have wanted as the club from the principality ended a 34-season love affair with the top flight in sorry circumstances.
"This is a big loss for French football," claimed interim coach Laurent Banide, who revived the 2004 Champions League finalists but ultimately could not repair the damage done under Guy Lacombe before Christmas. "We weren't good enough to stay in Ligue 1. You have to respect the laws of football."
