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Genesis is an expert on all things French football and runs an excellent Twitter channel here. There is a whole lot more to Ligue 1 than simply PSG, Messi, Mbappe and Neymar. It is increasingly becoming a highly entertaining league with a wealth of young and exciting talent.
Each week, Genesis will be sharing his inside knowledge on the happenings within French Football and Ligue 1, so you can be well equipped to spot value betting opportunities each week.
Ligue 1 Weekly Review
What To Look Out For In Ligue 1 This Weekend
- New Managers
Four of France’s biggest clubs are under new management this season. An almost unprecedented turnover. And now, after pre season and the first two game weeks, we have a decent idea of their preferred systems and the challenges ahead. Two, Christophe Galtier (PSG) and Igor Tudor (Marseille), find themselves under pressure immediately. Galtier, through no fault of his own, PSG is simply that sort of club. Tudor’s story is rather more self inflicted by the look of things. A spiky and demanding character, as uncompromising as he was as a feared centre back for Juventus. He seems to have already angered a core of influential players and noises emerging from the club suggest that his position is already under close review. Especially as it seems the board were divided about his appointment in the first place! Classic Marseille.
For Fonseca (Lille) and Favre (OGC Nice) they will likely have a bit less intense focus from the off. Some time to embed and get their ideas across. So far Fonseca’s Lille look like a potentially exciting and more free scoring version of themselves. And that’s despite losing most of their best players. Favre and Nice have had a slow start. But previous Favre teams have been expansive and attacking. Something Nice fans have been begging for.
Here are the latest betting odds for Ligue 1 at the time of publishing:
2. Early Hot Seat
Joining Igor Tudor and Christophe Galtier on the early hot seat comes Lyon’s Peter Bosz and Monaco’s Phillipe Clement. I don’t want this column to become a weekly whinge about Bosz. See my previous pieces for more detailed analysis. Suffice to say, Bosz remains eminently sackable. Clement might seem a little more strange. Monaco were on fire at the end of last season and remain in the Europa League. However, a second successive failure to reach the UCL (last year, admittedly, not Clement’s fault) is a major problem for a board and owner that doesn’t tend to rank amongst the most patient. Monaco, like Marseille, are never far from back room chaos. Clement has had major backing in the summer with Breel Embolo, Takumi Minamino, Malang Sarr and Mohamed Camara coming in. They’ve strengthened enough in every department that Clement has no excuses not to be in and around the top two all season. If he’s not, he’ll get the chop. Like Niko Kovac and Robert Moreno before him.
3. Relegation Battle
Next season Ligue 1 will be made up of only 18 teams instead of 20. That means that this season four teams go down. The drama for a large chunk of Ligue 1 teams is that aside from the regular top eight teams or so, the rest of them are a string of bad results away from being in the relegation fight. That adds a whole load more pressure on teams and managers and board rooms that was not necessarily there last season. I’d expect the relegation fight to be as engaging as the battle for European places, if not more so.
Ligue 1 – Game Of The Week – Lille vs PSG
Lille v PSG Sat 21 August 19:45 (UK time)
With the theme of the start of this piece being firmly around new managers it would be remiss therefore, not to have this game as the feature match. Lille, under Paulo Fonseca, and PSG under Christophe Galtier, are the top two teams in the league after two games. They are also the two most recent champions of France. And Galtier was Lille manager when they won the league in 2021. It’s the Derby de Galtier! Joking aside, this is a huge game. It’s PSG’s toughest game so far this season. A season in which the Paris side have looked utterly dominant. They’ve scored 10 goals in the two games so far. And Galtier’s 3-4-3 is seemingly getting the best out of Messi (2 goals, 1 assist) and Neymar (3 goals, 3 assists). Although while Neymar and Messi are flying, Kylian Mbappe seemed down in the dumps last week with the media suggesting that Mbappe had requested for a second time that PSG sell Neymar. A tête-à-tête that Galtier does not need so early in his tenure.
PSG also wrapped up the signing of Lille’s best player last week. Renato Sanches moved to Paris for a fee of around 12 million. And that’s been a theme of the Summer for Lille. Their spine has been severely weakened. Sven Botman, Renato Sanches and Burak Yilmaz have departed. As has Amadou Onana. They’ve done some shopping of their own bringing in Mohamed Bayo, Remy Cabella and Jonas Martin. Retaining Jonathan David is also huge for them. But it still feels like the arrivals don’t quite make up for the losses. Either way, Lille have made a good start and should really have two wins but for the heroics of Nantes’ goalkeeper Alban Lafont last week.
I’d predict PSG to win. Not by much. Both teams naturally create lots of chances though and PSG, as shown last week against Montpellier, aren’t immune from switching off and conceding goals. As such the chances of both sides scoring is pretty high in my view.
