First we got the bomb and that was good,'Cause we love peace and motherhood. Then Russia got the bomb, but that's O.K.,'Cause the balance of power's maintained that way! Who's next?
France got the bomb, but don't you grieve,'Cause they're on our side, I believe. China got the bomb, but have no fears; They can't wipe us out for at least five years! Who's next?
Then Indonesia claimed that they Were gonna get one any day. South Africa wants two, that's right: One for the black and one for the white! Who's next?
Egypt's gonna get one, too,Just to use on you know who. So Israel's getting tense, Wants one in self defense."The Lord's our shepherd, " says the psalm, But just in case, we better get a bomb! Who's next?
Luxembourg is next to go And, who knows, maybe Monaco. We'll try to stay serene and calm When Alabama gets the bomb! Who's next, who's next, who's next? Who's next?
Tom Lehrer, "Who's Next?"

Well, since I've spent way too long reading detailed accounts of the Iranian nuclear program, how to build a nuclear bomb, the weirdness of Saddam's nuclear program [which has largely fallen into the cracks of history], and general things nuclear and Middle East.... and Iran is [kind of rightfully] back in the news lately...

Welcome to my explanation of "what's up with Iran's nuclear program", "what's up with Iran", "how do i make nuke", and other things of such nature. It involves a lot of history and explanations of industrial manufacturing processes, and actually fairly little recent stuff because... not much has actually changed, in many ways, and Iran's modern history is quite interesting on its own--it was a struggle not to write more, I'm afraid. Hopefully, even if I don't think it's my best written or most concise work, it proves enlightening.

1. America's Shah

Our first character here is the last of his kind. Shah Mohammed Raza Pahlavi, or, as everyone called him in America and I'll call him here, just "the Shah".

The Shah is a most curious character in history. Born at the end of the First World War, he was raised as Iran became the world's most important oil producer [only eclipsed by Saudi Arabia several decades later]. He was installed by the British and Soviets when they invaded Iran in a little-known episode of the Second World War--Iran would ultimately serve as a significant logistics route and oil source during the war, and housed hundreds of thousands of Polish refugees in an odd quirk of history. Some descendants of Poles actually remain in Iran to this day.

However, Iran, despite boasting some of the world's largest oil reserves, largely remained a backwater. A large reason for this was that Iran had an exceptionally terrible oil deal with the Anglo-Persian Oil Company [later to be known as British Petroleum], which gave Iran only 16% of the revenues and even that only in name since there was little accountability to Iran in the bargain. This situation was unacceptable to the general Iranian public, in which feelings turned nationalistic rapidly, and, in the early 1950s, Prime Minister Mosaddegh [who largely controlled the show, despite the Shah being nominally in charge] nationalized the oil, to the general applause of Iran.

What happened next remains mired in deep political controversy across the globe. Britain is almost certainly mostly to blame for what happened; as they instituted a general embargo on Iran, and managed to convince the Americans to support an effort to launch a coup [counter-coup?] in Iran to restore the Shah [who had fled the country] to power. Even more confusingly for historians, it seems that there was legitimate factions within Iran pushing for the return and installation of the Shah, and Mosaddegh began to become increasingly desperate, dissolving parliament and placing himself as de facto dictator [and it should also be noted that Mosaddegh was not legally the prime minister at this point since the Shah nominally had the power to dismiss him and did so]. In any case, the events of the early 1950s ended with the Shah back on the throne as absolute monarch, unchallenged by any parliament, advisor, or landed noble. Ultimately, the oil was not nationalized, but a better [though still not exceptionally great] deal was made with a consortium of American and British oil companies.

And so things remained, until the early 1960s. The Shah was nothing if not ambitious, and his plans never lacked for grandeur, so, with much public aclaim, he launched a program of reforms he dubbed the "White Revolution" on account of it being bloodless [in theory, anyway]. These reforms led to the rapid growth, urbanization, and development of the Iranian economy, but they carried with them the seeds of their own destruction. While they did avert the rise of an effective communist movement in Iran, they created another revolution. These reforms created a new class of urban poor, of dissatisfied farmers, and particularly enraged the Shia clergy [largely because they deprived them of their traditional rural economic and power base].

However, it is not economics that really interests us here, but the Shah's true passion: World domination. Or at least close to it. Beginning with the massive surge in oil prices in the early 1970s [some of which were in fact instigated by the Shah himself with OPEC], the Shah finally had the financial resources to pursue what he always loved: Building an oversized, incredibly well-armed, and well-trained military. The Shah ordered billions of dollars in military equipment, almost all from the United States, to the point where Congress began agitating to restrict sales--to little effect as the executive branch, at least until the arrival of Jimmy Carter in 1976, was of little mind to control arms sales. Iran got its hands on everything from highly advanced electronic intelligence equipment [in the form of a collaboration with the CIA] to F-14s. The orders that were never delivered included 300 F-16s, 300 F-18s, squadrons of E-3 AWACs, and 4 guided-missile destroyers, the largest and most capable ever built at the time, among other miscellaneous sundries. To the Shah's credit, unlike almost every third-world tinpot dictator, and especially unlike his immediate neighbors and rivals--Iraq and Saudi Arabia--his military was, by all accounts, one of the world's best trained as well as best equipped. In particular, the Shah--a trained pilot himself--loved his air force, to the point that the Islamic Republic is still suspicious of it to this very day. Their feats during the coming war, while sadly never winning widespread recognition abroad, were some of the most incredible ever achieved in the skies. The Shah also engaged in aggressive diplomacy, developing a close relationship with Israel and a very close relationship with the United States, which eventually resulted in the US being closely associated with the Shah's rule to the point where he was sometimes called "America's Shah"--though those who study him closely learn that he also cultivated increasingly developed relationships with the Soviet Union, China, and other world powers, always striving to be more than America's outpost in the Middle East.

It is around this point when Iran first began getting funny ideas about nuclear weapons [though those likely started some time before, when Iran received its first nuclear reactor in 1957 through the "Atoms for Peace" program]. It's no real surprise, knowing the Shah's character. In fact, the Shah once, saying what most of those close to him and many within American intelligence already knew aloud, stated that he wanted the bomb.

in February 1974, following a Franco-Iranian agreement to cooperate on uranium enrichment, the shah told Le Monde that one day "sooner than is believed," Iran would be "in possession of a nuclear bomb." The shah’s surprising comment was at least partially in response to the 1974 Indian test of a nuclear weapon.
Realizing the repercussions of his comment, the shah ordered the Iranian Embassy in France to issue a statement declaring that stories about his plan to develop a bomb were "totally invented and without any basis whatsoever."

[Foreign Policy, The Shah's Atomic Dreams]

This was no idle threat, either. Iran had already, unbeknownst to most, been conducting experiments with plutonium reprocessing using its research reactor. And the Shah had plans to run Iran almost entirely on the clean power of the atom, building 23,000MW of nuclear capacity. The plutonium reprocessed from these plants could allow Iran to build up to 600-700 nuclear warheads every year. Around this point, Iran began demanding what it called "total control over the nuclear fuel cycle", which involved it being able to reprocess its spent fuel and enrich uranium. The US government, probably about the only country that actually cared about non-proliferation [well, the USSR might have as well] was quite nervous about these ideas and refused to export Iran sensitive nuclear technologies without extensive restrictions on what could be done with spent fuel. France and Germany, however, had absolutely zero qualms about selling the Shah [and later Saddam Hussein] nuclear technology, and several plants with very few restrictions on them were lined up for construction in Iran. America ultimately caved when it saw that Iran was just going to get uncontrolled reactors anyway from Europe and figured it might as well be the one building the power plants, so American companies got some contracts to build some of the 23,000MW of capacity too.

However, the Shah's love of his army would ultimately lead to his downfall. Inflation spiked as Iran kept importing weapons with increasingly scare dollars as oil prices receded from their highs in the mid-1970s, and the Shah saw no reason to take austerity measures. The Shah's economic reforms were also showing problems [though as an interesting side note, the Shah planned to nationalize the oil in 1979]. The intelligentsia, which had always hated the Shah, joined forces with the general populace and, for the first time, the Shia clergy, to expel the Shah. This would later prove to be a huge mistake.

2. Revolution and War

Ultimately, it was inevitable once he returned that Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini would come to power in Iran. He was the Shah's most vocal critic abroad and was beloved by the religious population, and he and the other Shia clerics even pretended to play at politics. That was until they were able to seize power, at which point they promptly discarded, imprisoned, and later executed the other factions involved--such as the intelligentsia and liberals, whom were responsible for the revolution that brought him back in the first place. The new Supreme Leader instituted a theocracy, turning back the clock of social progress decades. And he promptly began to dismantle everything the Shah had built, including the nuclear program, the entire military, and the expensive arms and nuclear purchases.

In a sense he had help on that matter, though. After early assurances and outreach, when the US welcomed the Shah for medical treatment, students [with the tacit support of the Supreme Leader] stormed the American embassy, taking the personnel there hostage. This resulted in a split between Iran--angry, nationalistic, upset at the US because it was associated with the hated Shah--and the United States, furious at the new upstart who had taken the embassy personnel hostage. A military rescue attempt failed disastrously, spelling doom for the Carter presidency and for the American relationship with Iran. Eventually, the hostages were recovered.

Iran's neighbors, however, would not remain quiet for long. Iran under the Shah had many enemies--the Soviet Union overshadowing it to the north, Iraq a danger to the west, Saudi Arabia an irritant to the south and Pakistan an uncertain factor to the east. Iran's many enemies were a large reason why the Shah had spent so much on weaponry and done so much to strengthen Iran's relationship with states on the periphery, from Oman to Israel. While the Shah was still around, none dared openly work against him. But with the Shah gone, and his mighty army in shambles, Iraq, now under the rule of Saddam Hussein, decided it was time to invade--this time actually for Iran's oil, which largely lies in the southwestern Arab marshlands bordering on Iraq.

Citing essentially made-up pretenses, the Iraqi Air Force launched a devastating surprise strike on the Iranian Air Force while the Iraqi Army rolled into the southwestern region of Iran, a marshy swamp populated by Arabs that held almost all of Iran's oil reserves. Or at least that was what was supposed to happen. The Iraqi Air Force was so hilariously bad at launching a first strike that the Iranian Air Force was able to launch a retaliatory strike the very next day that crippled the Iraqi Air Force for several years. The Iraqi invasion was able to penetrate a short distance into the region, but was fairly quickly halted, with Iraq doing incredibly dumb stuff like making unsupported armor assaults into urban terrain. It turned out that even as a shadow of its former self, the Iranian military was surprisingly good at its job.

What followed was eight years of one of the 20th century's bloodiest and least-well-known conflicts, far too long to describe here. Iraq tried repeatedly to invade Iran, with little success. Iran pushed Iraq out and took regions in southern Iraq. Iraq started frantically buying French and Soviet weapons, Iran was able to find some American hardware via Iran-Contra, and various black market sources--and, strangely enough, Israel, which actually had a team of advisors in Iran through much of the war. Iran used human wave tactics, often utilizing child soldiers, to make up for their equipment disadvantages, while Iraq turned to chemical weapons [largely supplied by European companies, with some help from... the United States] in an unsuccessful attempt to turn the deadlock. It was like the First World War, if fought with 1980s technology, but also worse somehow. Iran instigated revolts in the Kurdish regions of Iraq [which was basically what Iran had done for decades already] and Saddam responded by just gassing entire Kurdish villages. The French, the Gulf monarchies, and the Soviets backed Iraq [and at times even the United States got involved, though seldom very directly]. All the Iranians had were the Chinese and North Koreans.

In the end, the war resolved in a restoration to sine quo antebellum. Literally nothing changed. Iran was devastated from the war, which in its ending stages involved ballistic missile attacks on civilian areas.

These ballistic missile strikes, initially launched by Iraq against Iran, led to the development of an indigenous Iraqi ballistic missile program [with the support of, strangely, Argentina] along with the development of an Iranian ballistic missile program with support from the North Koreans and Chinese, along with some residual support from Israel which had been collaboratively developing long-range missiles with Iran under the Shah. That ballistic program would be one of the war's many legacies, and since then Iran has developed one of the world's most sophisticated ballistic missile arsenals, moving on from crude scud clones to highly advanced, precision-guided tactical missiles that can reliably hit within a few meters of their target. This would almost certainly be the vehicle Iran deployed any nukes it got on, and it could do so with good reliability, range, and protection.

Iraq, whom had suffered from Iranian ballistic missile strikes and air raids, but mostly from borrowing a whole lot of money from the Gulf States to finance the whole war, was also devestated. Iraq decided its solution was to just kill the creditors, in this case Kuwait, which proved to be a terrible idea as literally the entire world united against Iraq to remove it. Thus, the entire Western world, which up until a year or two before this had been loaning money and selling weapons and advanced technology to Saddam Hussein, ended up ganging up on Iraq and obliterating its army. Then it turned out that Iraq had a nuclear weapons program--largely fueled by Western technology. But to understand what they and Iran are doing, we need to learn some physics. Well, mostly engineering.

3. How to build The Bomb, a DIY Guide

Okay, I finally have gotten to the nuclear bomb part. So how do you build a nuclear bomb?

Well, what you need for the most simple sort of weapon--a pure fission weapon, a meagre few tens of kilotons of TNT-equivalent, the technology that leveled Hiroshima and Nagasaki--seems tantalizingly simple. A trivial amount of plutonium-240 or uranium-235 will do the job for you--around 15 kilograms, varying on how good you are at physics and how big you want the boom to be. Add that in a package with certain other components, none of which are especially hard to make--mostly having to do with precision explosives--and you have the bomb. It's essentially just an engineering and implementation problem [the H-bomb is a bit different, but we'll ignore it for our purposes].

Of course, that's easier said than done. Plutonium-240 and Uranium-235 of sufficient quality [around ~90% purity] are actually pretty hard to get, and while there are alternative routes--you can use reactor grade plutonium if treated right, according to Anglo-American research, or lower-enriched uranium [though in much greater quantities], or even unconventional routes like the uranium hydride bomb--these are really the two things that you need in quantity.

There are a number of ways to get Uranium-235. Uranium-235 carries with it one substantial advantage: You can just dig it up out of the ground. That's where the advantages stop. Enriching uranium from its natural levels of around 0.7% U-235 to 90% is pretty difficult, as it turns out. There are several approaches.

The first one tried is the "Calutron" which uses particle accelerators to separate out the isotopes, and turned out to be horrendously inefficient, never being used after the Manhattan Project [which really did believe in throwing everything at the wall to see what sticks] until some were discovered in Iraq in the mid-1990s when UN inspectors were allowed in. Called "Baghdadtrons", Iraq had developed them because the technology was subject to essentially no export controls [and nobody asked why the Iraqis were suddenly interested in magnets and particle accelerators] and was quite simple to master. Fortunately, they didn't produce that much uranium, but if they had gone on for just a few more years, Iraq would have ended up with a bomb.

The second major method relies on gaseous diffusion, a process requiring massive structures that could handle uranium hexafluoride, and proved quite difficult to develop. The big nuclear states all had these facilities, along with other commercial interests--the French consortium that enriches uranium actually had a 10% interest purchased in it by the Shah. However, they were never that practical for the small, aspiring weapons state--too big and too complicated, and very obvious. The only state which developed its first bomb through gaseous diffusion is, to my knowledge, China.

The third, however, and the one that has gained the most attention now, is the centrifuge. This technology, via which virtually all uranium enrichment these days occurs, relies on just spinning a centrifuge at ultra-high speeds to separate the isotopes--like you might have done in biology, but on a much larger scale. These centrifuges are rather difficult to build and rely on advanced, hard-to-manufacture materials like carbon fiber and maraging steel. Unfortunately, though, thanks to the work of Pakistani nuclear scientist A. Q. Khan, and the efforts of a number of German and French corporations, the knowledge of how to build advanced centrifuges is out there if you know the right people--like Iraq did. They were building a centrifuge using training and technology from European companies, though they never got it up to scale. Libya also got this information, and Iran and North Korea as well. Turns out the Axis of Evil is real, but it's mostly just Pakistan and European nuclear companies.

Oh, and as a minor note, there's a fourth process that's been collecting a lot of concern that relies on lasers to enrich uranium, which has actually been commercialized in Australia. There's a good deal of fear that the technology is so compact that it'll enable virtually any state to enrich uranium in secret. Also, it should be noted that enriched uranium does have other uses than to make bombs--it fuels certain classes of nuclear reactors, for instance. However, the primary reason for enrichment is usually to make bombs.

Plutonium-240, though, comes pretty much one way: Out of nuclear waste. You take raw nuclear waste--there are some specifics if you want to optimize generation of plutonium, but you can do it to pretty much any nuclear waste--then you do some fancy and extremely toxic and dangerous chemistry on it, and, if you've done everything right, out comes plutonium of weapons grade, along with some uranium. This can be reused as fuel for nuclear reactors, and often is--Japan, for instance, has literal tons of plutonium reprocessed from its fleet of nuclear power stations. However, it also produces weapons-grade plutonium [or reactor-grade plutonium, which can be turned into a crude device anyhow]. The only problem with this is that generally people are quite touchy about nuclear reactors, especially the kind good at making high-quality plutonium, and IAEA supervision and controls are required in non-nuclear states. They're also very easy targets for airstrikes, as Syria and Iraq both discovered.

Most countries historically opted for the plutonium route--they could operate nuclear reactors on their own and nobody nearby could stop them. The United States, the United Kingdom, France, Israel, the Soviet Union, and North Korea all opted for plutonium. Only China, Pakistan, and South Africa have opted for enriched uranium--though the option seems to be rising in popularity.

4. Iran [maybe] builds a bomb

Well, since Iraq isn't the focus of this and Saddam is very much dead.. back to Iran.

Iran's bomb program is thought to have begun in 1973, when the Shah summoned a nuclear physicist named Akbar Etemad, told him he wanted to launch a nuclear program, and asked him to develop a plan. And, just like that, Iran was off on the road to a bomb. An Atomic Energy Agency was formed, its employees being the best paid in the entire Iranian government. Students were dispatched to a special nuclear engineering program set up with MIT. Huge quantities of money were dumped into nuclear energy, the development of uranium mines, and, of course, the bomb program. This is when the aforementioned activities of the Shah took place.

And since then, it's never really died. It probably would win an award for longest continually operating nuclear program that hasn't built a bomb. The Islamic Revolution was a serious setback as most of the Shah's atomic scientists were purged or fled the country, and so was the Iran-Iraq War, which represented a massive drain on Iranian resources. It continued working at the bomb, but, without those people--and more importantly without the cooperation of Europe, whom were not fans of the revolutionary regime--they stood no chance at building it anytime soon. Still, they worked away--largely knowing that Saddam was pursuing nukes as well, and that he would use them against Iran if he got them first.

In the 1990s, Iran largely focused on reconstruction and development from the catastrophic war. The nuclear program kept whirring away in the background, though. With the help of new technology, new friends--including Russia, no longer committed to non-proliferation as it once was, and soon-to-be nuclear state North Korea--and with a new generation of experts, Iran kept on developing the bomb right up until 2003, when... it stopped. There were probably many reasons for that--Saddam was gone, the United States was acting aggressive, international pressure was up--but they also likely had most or all of the needed information to build a weapon--just not the materials.

However, they kept up another angle--using the very same nationalist rhetoric as the Shah did, years ago, they asserted their right under the Non-Proliferation Treaty [whether one exists is debatable] to enrich uranium and possibly reprocess plutonium in pursuit of a domestic nuclear power program. This program would both fuel Iran's energy needs [which, surprisingly, it has quite a lot of] by producing fuel for Russian-built nuclear reactors, and also provide them with the same materials required to build a nuclear bomb--making them a nuclear-latent state, just like Japan or South Korea. That's when Iran's program really began attracting concern. Along with attention from Israel and the United States, who engaged in assassinations, sabotage, or expatriation of Iranian nuclear scientists [stealing them from nuclear conferences, rescuing their family from Iran, and bringing them to the US] in order to slow the program, with mixed results--while they did serious damage, it still continued. So efforts turned to negotiation.

5. JCPOA, or, how to successfully punt the can

Negotiations began in the late 2000s to attempt to halt the progress of Iran's nuclear program, which was rapidly developing and showed breakout potential to build a bomb by about 2010. While initially they bore little fruit, in 2013, an interim agreement was signed, followed by a full agreement in 2015. The agreement, concluded by the P5+1 [USA, Russia, UK, France, China and Germany] lifted most sanctions on Iran through a phased period, including sanctions on arms exports and an embargo on selling arms to Iran, and in return Iran would subscribe to certain limits on its nuclear program.

It would limit the enrichment of uranium to a low percentage and how much it possessed at any one instance, it renounced certain activities involved in fuel reprocessing and bomb design, it had to export its heavy water [as a side effect Iran is now one of the world's largest heavy-water exporters], and numerous other restrictions were installed. However, the most stringent of them began expiring in the early 2020s, with virtually all restrictions gone by around 2030. This fact has attracted a great deal of attention--in essence, JCPOA is punting the can a little over a decade. Still, alternatives weren't great. JCPOA increased the time that Iran would have to take to get a bomb from around three months to a bit more than that, six months. It also diminished the likelihood Iran would seek a bomb--as long as it could get most of the benefits by remaining on the threshold without actually crossing it, it seemed unlikely that Iran would actually do so when it brought on so many risks--not just sanctions but preemptive military strikes and proliferation throughout the region via Saudi Arabia and the UAE. It wasn't a perfect deal by any means, but it was a deal, and it worked about as well as one might have hoped. That was, until Trump unilaterally pulled out of it.

6. Where We're At Now

When Trump pulled out of JCPOA, reinstating sanctions on Iran, the response began tepidly. But within a year, Iran systematically began breaching the limits of JCPOA. Initially, Iran hoped that other international partners would save it--Europe built a special financial instrument to trade with Iran without sanctions, and Iran turned to East Asia for economic support. However, neither of these really panned out--corporations were scared of American retaliation and Europe found itself unable to do much about the problem. So, Iran ended its good behavior and began slowly, systematically breaching the limits placed on it under JCPOA. It began raising enrichment percentages, and breached its uranium stockpile limits. Iran also became increasingly aggressive in other areas, engaging in mining and seizure of ships--most recently a South Korean tanker--and using its numerous proxy militias to target American interests. In the meantime, Iran's economy has entered freefall--it was never well-managed in the first place, especially with Islamic foundations and the Revolutionary Guard controlling much of the economy, and the sanctions and collapsing oil prices have sent it into a recession. Covid also hit Iran particularly hard, adding to its woes.

At the time I'm writing this, Iran has activated its Fordow facility--which was banned under JCPOA--and has begun to enrich uranium to 20% U-235 levels. This might not sound like a lot, but it's actually much easier to enrich 20% to 90% than 4% to 20%. In essence, with these latest breeches, Iran's breakout time has begun rapidly shrinking--probably back to three months now, or even worse.

7. Going Forward

If Iran wants the bomb, there's not that much that can be done to stop it. Diplomacy will be difficult considering what we did last time, and military strikes are risky on the part of the United States--which could face backlash via proxy attacks across the Middle East--and impossible for Israel, which does not have weapons large enough to destroy Iran's more heavily fortified facilities aside from any bunker-busting nuclear warheads it possibly possesses. Sabotage and assassination will only delay the inevitable. Iran's nuclear program, it seems, will be one of President Biden's first major challenges--vying for attention with all the other ones--and it remains to be seen what he will do about it. I myself have pretty much no clue how to handle the situation.

Other lessons that can be learned here [or at least I learned here] are:

Never collaborate with violent extremists because they just kill you when the revolution is over
Be careful about promoting nuclear technology and selling it to other countries because there very much are proliferation risks
Don't sell stuff to Saddam Hussein [big one]
We can blame Europe for nuclear proliferation [guess where AQ Khan got his first designs from, along with Pakistan... oh, and India got theirs from Canada]
There really isn't much that can be done to stop most countries from getting the bomb if they want one, despite what some suggest. Nuclear weapons... find a way.

8. Citations

Iraq's Programs to Make Highly Enriched Uranium and Plutonium for Nuclear Weapons Prior to the Gulf War, David Albright
The origin of Iraq's Nuclear Weapons Program, Suren Erkman, Andre Gsponer, Jean-Pierre Hurni, and Stephan Klement
The Shah's Atomic Dreams, Abbas Milani
Enrichment Supply And Technology Outside The United States, S. A. Levin and S. Blumkin
Just Because No One Does It Anymore Doesn't Mean It Doesn't Work, Chris Camp
U.S. Finds Iran Halted Its Nuclear Arms Effort in 2003, Mark Mazzetti
Atomic Ayatollahs, David Segal
Timeline of Nuclear Diplomacy With Iran
Iran starts 20% uranium enrichment, seizes South Korean ship
And of course others I haven't noted here in minor capacities.

Le Bilan - Ligue 1 Matchday 18 : Angers Management

After a well-deserved two weeks break, Ligue 1 was back with a double 5-matches batch on wednesday night. With the situation as close as ever both at the top and at the bottom of the ranking, there was a lot of things to follow. And two attractions in particular : the first matches of Raymond Domenech for Nantes and Mauricio Pochettino for Paris.

Appetizers

The first fixture for Nantes' new coach wasn't the easiest, clearly, at home against Rennes. And while they logically suffered (only 28% of possession), they didn't concede too many occasions and it was mostly Rennes that was disappointing. After their great month of december, the red and black had the opportunity to get closer to the top 3. In the end, a rather poor 0-0, one of the three of the night.
At the opposite side of the excitation spectrum was the match between another breton team, Lorient, and Monaco. The sending off of Jonathan Delaplace early in the second half while the score was 1-1 made things easier for Kovac and his players who unleashed their attacking power (the 3rd attack of the league) to score 4 goals in less than 30 minutes, notably a beautiful one by Golovin, 8 seconds after he entered the pitch before being responsible for two other goals, four months after his last match. While the monégasques appear ready to go for a european spot, Lorient falls back in the bottom two in this joyous merry-go-round that is the relegation battle.
Patrick Vieira or not, William Saliba or not, the incremental changes made by OGC Nice don't seem to produce any positive results. Of course the absence of Kasper Dolberg isn't helpful but not losing to Brest should be the bare minimum expected from a team who has invested a lot recently. Anyway, Brest claimed their sixth home win this season with goals from Steve Mounié and former Nice player Franck Honorat (following a now traditional nonsensic defensive mistake).
Last time, we talked about Nîmes' alarming situation and how crucial the match against Strasbourg was going to be before a tough schedule ahead. Well, this is now DEFCON 1 after the thrashing they were the victims yesterday (and kind of perpetrators too when you offer three penalties to your opponents). Strasbourg hasn't looked like a relegation candidate for a good month now. Ajorque and Diallo is too good of an attack to be in trouble.
In a rather similar manner to a previous win this season in Strasbourg, Lyon seemed to be determined to search for unneeded troubles. There's no reason to panic when you are ahead by three goals against a promoted team, albeit a very good one, who oddly enough scored all their 27 goals of the season from the penalty box (stat provided by av1997f aka OptaGone). Yet here we are again with a torturous last 30 minutes full of fear and anguish for the fans. Fortunately, that ended well again (and especially given the other results) but piling on defensive players to protect a result is not necessarily a reassuring way of assuming your title chasing status.
If Lyon can be happy about their win against Lens, it's also because their rivals failed to produce the same result. And the first one did it pretty badly as Lille lost at home to Angers after an early brace from the center-back Romain Thomas. The northerners hadn't lost at home for nearly a year but the defensive quality of Angers prevented them to score more than one goal despite a logical dominance throughout the game.
The second one, of course, is Paris Saint-Germain and their shipment of injuries. Of course when 75% of the defense is composed by Dagba, Bakker and Kehrer, it's difficult to be confident. But it's Idrissa Gueye that offered les Verts and Romain Hamouma the chance to take the lead. The champions reacted quickly with a 100% italian goal (assist from Verratti to Kean) 3 minutes later. After that, a pretty even game with sequences of domination for both sides (for Saint-Étienne in the first part of the second half, for Paris later in the game). Obviously a disappointing result for Pochettino in his first match while Sainté is on a bizarre serie of 6 draws in their last 7 matches (and, more worrying, 1 win in their last 15 matches).
After a tough end of 2020, Marseille got back up against Montpellier in a match where 31 shots took place. The olympians were the most precise which allowed them to score three goals to one for their opponents, a logical victory after dominating rather clearly the match despite Benedetto's best efforts to throw his chances. It was Payet and Germain, recently subbed in, who delivered the win. Montpellier's european ambitions unfortunately seem to be shrinking week after week.

Main Course

Matches

Home	Score	Away
FC Nantes	0-0	Stade Rennais

FC Metz	0-0	Girondins de Bordeaux

FC Lorient	2-5	AS Monaco
Moffi 31', Gravillon 67'		Disasi 9', Golovin 64', Volland 68', Diop 78', Maripan 88'
Stade Brestois	2-0	OGC Nice
Mounié 23', Honorat 28'
RC Strasbourg	5-0	Nîmes Olympique
Ajorque 36', Diallo 38', Lala (p) 45'+1, Ajorque 51', Waris (p) 90'
Olympique Lyonnais	3-2	RC Lens
Depay 39', Fortes (og) 46', Depay (p) 52'		Sotoca 56', Doucouré 89'
Olympique de Marseille	3-1	Montpellier Hérault SC
Radonjic 41', Payet 80', Germain 84'		Mollet 52'
AS Saint-Étienne	1-1	Paris Saint-Germain
Hamouma 19'		Kean 22'
Stade de Reims	0-0	Dijon FCO

Lille OSC	1-2	Angers SCO
Yılmaz 42'		Thomas 6', Thomas 11'

Table

#	Team	Pts	P	W	D	L	GF	GA	GD
1	Olympique Lyonnais	39	18	11	6	1	37	16	+21
2	Paris Saint-Germain	36	18	11	3	4	40	11	+29
3	Lille OSC	36	18	10	6	2	32	14	+18
4	Stade Rennais	32	18	9	5	4	26	19	+7
5	Olympique de Marseille	31	16	9	4	3	25	16	+9
6	AS Monaco	30	18	9	3	6	33	27	+6
7	Angers SCO	30	18	9	3	6	25	27	-2
8	RC Lens	27	17	8	3	6	28	27	+1
9	Montpellier HSC	27	18	8	3	7	30	31	-1
10	Stade Brestois	26	18	8	2	8	30	31	-1
11	FC Metz	24	18	6	6	6	19	17	+2
12	Girondins de Bordeaux	23	18	6	5	7	18	20	-2
13	OGC Nice	22	17	6	4	7	21	24	-3
14	AS Saint-Étienne	19	18	4	7	7	19	26	-7
15	Stade de Reims	18	18	4	6	8	24	28	-4
16	RC Strasbourg	17	18	5	2	11	27	32	-5
17	FC Nantes	16	18	3	7	8	18	30	-12
18	Dijon FCO	13	18	2	7	9	12	26	-14
19	FC Lorient	12	18	3	3	12	19	36	-17
20	Nîmes Olympique	12	18	3	3	12	14	39	-25

1-2 Champions League group stage
3 Champions League qualifiers round 3
4 Europa League group stage
5 Europa Conference League play-offs
18 Relegation play-offs
19-20 Relegation to Ligue 2

Goals

Player	Team	Goals	This week
Kylian Mbappé	Paris Saint-Germain	12
Memphis Depay	Olympique Lyonnais	10	(+2)
Boulaye Dia	Stade de Reims	.
Karl Toko Ekambi	Olympique Lyonnais	9
Ludovic Ajorque	RC Strasbourg	8	(+2)
Andy Delort	Montpellier HSC	.
Moise Kean	Paris Saint-Germain	.	(+1)
Kevin Volland	AS Monaco	.	(+1)
Burak Yılmaz	Lille OSC	.	(+1)
Wissam Ben Yedder	AS Monaco	7
Tino Kadewere	Olympique Lyonnais	.
Gaël Kakuta	RC Lens	.
Habib Diallo	RC Strasbourg	6	(+1)
Gaëtan Laborde	Montpellier HSC	.
Ibrahima Niane	FC Metz	.
Florian Thauvin	Olympique de Marseille	.

Assists

Player	Team	Assists
Jonathan Bamba	Lille OSC	7
Florian Thauvin	Olympique de Marseille	.
Andy Delort	Montpellier HSC	6
Gaëtan Laborde	Montpellier HSC	5
Ludovic Ajorque	RC Strasbourg	4
Houssem Aouar	Olympique Lyonnais	.
Hatem Ben Arfa	Girondins de Bordeaux	.
Wissam Ben Yedder	AS Monaco	.
Memphis Depay	Olympique Lyonnais	.
Ángel Di María	Paris Saint-Germain	.
Gaël Kakuta	RC Lens	.
Kylian Mbappé	Paris Saint-Germain	.
Romain Perraud	Stade Brestois	.
Junior Sambia	Montpellier HSC	.
Pablo Sarabia	Paris Saint-Germain	.
Karl Toko Ekambi	Olympique Lyonnais	.
Burak Yılmaz	Lille OSC	.

COVID Championship

(May not be 100% accurate)

Team	COVID cases
OGC Nice	17
RC Lens	14
Montpellier Hérault SC	11
FC Nantes	10
RC Strasbourg	9
Paris Saint-Germain	.
Lille OSC	.
Olympique de Marseille	.
AS Saint-Étienne	7
Olympique Lyonnais	6
AS Monaco	.
Dijon FCO	5
Nîmes Olympique	.
Stade Rennais	.
Angers SCO	3
FC Metz	.
Girondins de Bordeaux	1
Stade Brestois	.
FC Lorient	.
Stade de Reims	.

Dessert

Top 3 Goals of the Week

#	Player	Match
1	Cheick Doucouré	Olympique Lyonnais vs RC Lens
2	Florian Sotoca	Olympique Lyonnais vs RC Lens
3	Romain Thomas	Lille OSC vs Angers SCO

Upwards

Angers SCO : Ever since they were promoted in Ligue 1 in 2015, Angers has always been a reliable midtable team. Neither pushing for a european spot, nor have they ever been under an immediate relegation threat, as proven by their finishing positions : 9th, 12th, 14th, 13th and 11th last season. Basically a french Burnley. They actually share other similarities with the english team. Both teams base their results primarily on a defensive and collective strength, nicknamed "la dalle angevine" ("angevine hunger") and both teams have their coaches leading the rankings of their respective leagues in terms of longevity (2012 for Sean Dyche, 2011 for Stéphane Moulin, the longest ongoing tenure in the Big 5 leagues). Currently, Angers is comfortably in the first half of the table following two wins against Marseille and Lille, no less. With the 10th attack and the 11th defense of the league, there is little reason to believe they will finish the season at a much higher position than where they are now but their 30 points tally may allow them to be slightly more ambitious in the second half of the season. After all, they've got a very talented player at their disposal. After Nicolas Pepe and Karl Toko-Ekambi recently, this year it's Angelo Fulgini who's the technical leader of the black and white team and by far their best player, as stated by EastOfEden_ here. Keep going Angers, you work very well !
Kevin Volland : After a little hiccup in early december (three losses in a row), Monaco has since bounced back with two wins and one draw (though it was the minimum expected against three teams from the bottom of the league). And there's one man who has been the symbol of Monaco's resurgence under Niko Kovač : Kevin Volland, who scored in each of these last three matches, increasing his tally up to eight goals since the beginning of the season and his arrival in the Principality, including two against Paris Saint-Germain during the 3-2 victory in november. The german striker has brought with him the consistency he had in Bundesliga and it's a good news for Monaco as Wissam Ben Yedder has lost a bit of influence recently following his COVID-19 positive test (he still assisted 3 times since then but scored only once compared to 6 goals previously). Volland has been reliable, clinical and technically vastly superior to the Ligue 1 average. His last goal, very instinctive, is a perfect example of his level of confidence right now. With the coming back of Aleksandr Golovin after four months of injury, the rise in power of Sofiane Diop and if Ben Yedder gets back his goalscoring ability but most importantly if they manage to settle their defensive issues, Monaco will be in the battle for the fourth place.

L'Équipe Team of the Week

https://imgur.com/a/z6Kt1mC

Quotes

Thierry Laurey, Strasbourg coach :

I had told the players before the match that you rarely win 5-0 on a restart match and that it is often in difficulty. I would have done well to keep my mouth shut.

Jérôme Arpinon, Nîmes coach :

I can't find the values of the club, and that bothers me a lot. If you want to be maintained, you have to show something else. Strasbourg has stepped on us in all the duels. Some have to rediscover values, you can't play with 8 or 9 players on the pitch, some pretend to run. [...] We don't feel that we're fighting to stay up. From now on, we're going to put on guys who may have less technique, but more values, more heart, who have a love of the jersey.

Stéphane Moulin, Angers coach :

Is it the most beautiful victory since the comeback in L1 in 2015? Yes, because we played against the tied leader, who was undefeated at home this season. We have achieved a great feat, it is a very, very big performance, I am very, very proud of the team and the group. If there was a good moment, it was this one: Lille played a lot of matches and there was a break. I had said there would be surprises, because the big teams are not necessarily ready.

Claude Puel, Saint-Étienne coach :

There is satisfaction for our general behaviour and a bit of frustration because we have the feeling that we could get a better result. But we mustn't be too greedy. This feeling was stronger in the previous matches that we deserved to win. But we are on a good phase, even if we are not rewarded. We saw a structure, playing intentions, presence on set-pieces, we took the ball out cleanly. We have to continue like that.

Christophe Galtier, Lille coach :

Angers deserves its victory but we were absent. Absent without the ball, absent in the marking, absent in the duels and with too much technical waste. Maybe this defeat will remind us what we have to put into a match from the first minute to be performant. Losing matches can happen, but by being so absent, there are questions. This defeat doesn't worry me, I don't want to ring the alarm bell. But it does make you think. We have to ask ourselves the right questions. We had to do much better.

av1997f, statistician :

28% of possession for Nantes. Whatever the way we calculate the possession, we can say they don't play like Barcelona.

Next matchday

Saturday 09/01, 21:00
Dijon FCO - Olympique de Marseille
Girondins de Bordeaux - FC Lorient
RC Lens - RC Strasbourg
Montpellier Hérault SC - FC Nantes
Stade Rennais - Olympique Lyonnais
Stade de Reims - AS Saint-Étienne
Nîmes Olympique - Lille OSC
FC Metz - OGC Nice
Paris Saint-Germain - Stade Brestois
AS Monaco - Angers SCO
Thanks a lot to Hippemann and NotMeladroit for all the clips and the tables ! For more news about the best league in the world (except for the other four) and to improve your french, come and subscribe to /Ligue1.
All feedbacks are welcome !
Previous matchdays :
Season 2020-2021
M1 - M2 - M3 - M4 - M5 - M6 - M7 - M8 - M9 - M10 - M11 - M12 - M13 - M14 - M15 - M16 - M17 - Mid-Season
Season 2019-2020
M12 - M13 - M14 - M15 - M16 - M17 - M18 - M19 - M20 - M21 - M22 - M23 - M24 - M25 - M26 - M27 - M28

Le Bilan Infinity War - Mid-Season Special

Happy New Year to everyone and welcome to a special edition of Le Bilan. For a little more than a year now I've been writing these weekly recaps about Ligue 1, a league that may not be the best in the world but still deserved more attention on /soccer.
I would have probably stopped doing them if it was not for the constant support from the small but very passionate french community on here who constantly provides me help, ideas and inspiration. That's why I wanted to have them on board for this one-off. So I gathered the Avengers of the french /soccer redditors to let them talk about their respective clubs and what happened to them so far this season.
I would like to thank everyone who accepted to participate in this collective work, it's been a real pleasure reading all your contributions.
The regular Bilan will be back on thursday after matchday 18. In the meantime, enjoy this one !

Ligue 1

Olympique Lyonnais by sugima

After the final 8, and the 4th harvest of Pep Guardiola's Manchester City by Maxwel Cornet in 2 seasons, we have only Ligue 1 and the Cup to play. No Champions League or Europa League, due to a 7th spot when the League decided to terminate the 2019-20 season. After 6 matches (1W-4D-1L), this season felt like it would be a second shit season in a row in Ligue 1 : 3 draw games against opponents who are in the 2nd half of the table (Bordeaux, Nîmes and Lorient), and one against Marseille who played 70 min with 10 men. Add to this an outrageous amount of crosses all going into the void, and Rudi Garcia was ready to miss a European spot twice in a row. But this awful streak came to an end, and OL won 29 points out of 33 in the following 11 matches. Despite this successful streak, these matches still include some poor performances compared to the expected standard of one of the richest French clubs : the 7th match against Strasbourg who came back from 0-3 down to 2-3 and could have equalized in the last minutes, the 8th match against Monaco (4-1 win, 4-0 lead at half-time with 4 generous gifts from Monaco's defense, but Monaco dominated the whole 2nd half) or the match against Brest at home (15th match day), where OL conceded the equalizer on a last minute penalty when Brest was down to 10 men (again ...). The difficulty to keep a result with an extra player on the pitch seems to go on, and often coincides with Garcia's choice to sub off an attacking player for a defensive one. On the bright side, our midfield now performs better than the past seasons, which helps the whole team.
Best player : ?
I'm not sure. Thiago Mendes seems to have replaced his ghost from the past season, Lucas Paquetà and Tino Kadewere also performed well for their first half season.
Revelation : Tino Kadewere
He was recruited as a good Ligue 2 striker last winter, stayed in Le Havre on loan and ended best scorer of the 19-20 season with 20 goals scored. Many recent Ligue 2 great scorers have failed in Ligue 1 (Charbonnier, Bozok ..), and there are already many strikers in Lyon, so I was afraid of the result. He turns out to be an intelligent player, and more than a pure striker. Let's see if he confirms on the long term.
Final place : Champion
(Despite Rudi Garcia)
With PSG and LOSC still involved in CL and EL respectively, we have to be a title contender until the end. We also improved our midfield and attack during the summer. There's still Maxwel Cornet playing left back, but it doesn't matter as long as the rest of the team plays well.

Lille OSC by PAT_The_Whale

We started the season very well with a 1-1 draw against a CL contender (Rennes), which is something we’ll see a lot during the season: Win against mid/low-table teams, draw against CL contenders. There were only 3 exceptions: draw against Nice, loss against Brest (only loss in the league so far) and draw against Saint-Etienne, and we can count the wins against Monaco and Montpellier as exceptions too, but in my opinion they are rather EL contenders. Our last two games of the half-season are against Angers and Nîmes, which means both are winnable. In that case, we’d beat our previous point record by mid-season, 42 points instead of the previous record of 40 during the 2013-2014 season (we finished 3rd).
In the EL, it’s the contrary: 2 wins against 3rd placed Sparta Praha, 1 win and 1 draw against 1st placed AC Milan, 1 draw and 1 loss against last placed Celtic. Fun fact, we were the only team to not win against Celtic, meaning that we gave them their only 4 points. Because of that, we’ll have to face Ajax instead of Red Star Belgrade.
Best player : Renato Sanches
Even if he is often injured, he singlehandedly destroyed AC Milan’s midfield and is one of our main creative forces. When he isn’t playing, our wingers and strikers have to be more creative. When he is playing, they can focus on being available, which makes a huge difference.
Revelation(s) :
Burak Yilmaz : Came out of Turkey, 35 years old. Nobody expected him to be this good.
Yusuf Yazici : He was absolutely shit last season, then ruptured his ACL. He said he worked hard to get back into form, and man did it work well. He’s become very good this season, a complete turnover for him.
Sven Botman : We sold our big CB talent Gabriel for 30M. Then we bought some no-name from Ajax who couldn’t even get to their first team. That man has serious world class potential. So fucking good.
Xeka : He was good 2 seasons ago, but nothing spectacular. Then he injured himself in the end of the season. Next season, he’s clearly below his level, we thought that the injury ruined him. Now comes this season where he often replaces Sanches because of his injuries, and he’s been better than 2 seasons ago. Not our most important player at all by far, but he’s also had a big turnover, and has shown to be very important.
Final place : 1st-3rd
Lyon don’t have to play Europe, so they get a form advantage, but we can safely say that Lille and PSG probably won’t be winning their respective competitions, so that advantage might not last. PSG might also stop getting unlucky with injuries. Jonathan David might figure out how to score again. It’s extremely hard to predict the league winner this season.

Paris Saint-Germain by Rerel

On the 24th of August 2020, Paris got defeated in its first final of Champions League against the German champion Bayern Munich. The LFP, who is the reigning body of Ligue 1, got the genius idea to start the season on the 22nd of August, before the CL final even took place.
Such generosity from LFP and the 8 Covid cases the team had, led to a poor beginning of the season for Paris. With 2 defeats against Lens (7th of Ligue 1) and Marseille (5th) right at the start. There were two more defeats against AS Monaco and Olympique Lyonnais later. PSG has never won the Ligue 1 title with more than 3 defeats. This season is definitely more challenging for the Parisian club who has to catch up on both Lyon and Lille to hope to win the title of 2020-2021.
In Champions League, Paris Saint-Germain also had a difficult start with two defeats against Manchester and Leipzig. But with an incredible turn of events, they managed to win both return legs against the group leaders and take the leadership of the group of death that sent Manchester United going to Europa league. Mainly thanks to Neymar with his 6 goals contribution in Champions League for PSG.
The unexpected recruit and success of Paris this season must be Moise Kean. The 20 years old striker managed to already score 7 goals in Ligue 1 and 2 in champions league. While invisible at Everton, the young Italian prodigy managed to win playing time in Paris earning the trust of his manager and beneficiating from Icardi's mysterious long term abductors injury.
While PSG is currently behind Lyon and Lille in the Ligue 1 table and a sudden managerial change has appeared... There are quite a lot of perplexity on the future of the club results this season. Qataris club owners seem to have lost faith in their German coach Thomas Tuchel and now resolved to chase the Argentine Mauricio Pochettino to replace him.
The fan base has been quite divided on this managerial change. A strong side of Parisians felt the team lacked identity in its playing style. While the other side defended the results Tuchel managed to achieve. The truth is that both sides are right. Indeed, Tuchel didn't have a team identity and style. He changed the tactics very often to adapt to injuries, competitions, opponents. The players themselves had doubts on some of his decisions: playing Marquinhos in the midfield, Danilo in defense, then reversing this situation completely, going with a 3-5-2 formation. PSG viewers noticed the constant lack of pressing and stability the midfield has without Verratti.
Can we blame it all on the ridiculous amount of injuries in his squad? (highest in Europe) Surely, PSG fans liked Thomas Tuchel, some of them only liked his first 6 months at the club when he looked like tactical genius. But the German manager has been looking fed up for quite some time and his communication showed it. It's also rumoured that he lost the support of some players after the 2nd leg against İstanbul Başakşehir.
Best player : Neymar
Revelation : Moise Kean
Final place : 2nd

Stade Rennais by ThePr1d3

What can I say about that first half of the season from Stade Rennais ? Probably the same that can be always said for this club. It's been a wild ride. Following that club is extremely interesting, deeply frustrating, even disappointing at times but God damn if it isn't rewarding, and the most exciting experience you can get. And those past few months have been all of that in a nutshell.
After an unexpected change in the administration, the club was entering the season to confirm its new ambitions, or fall back into averageness. The transfer season was encouraging, with the signings of Aguerd and Rugani (loan) to reinforce the CB, of Guirassy as a much needed competition to Mbaye Niang, of Terrier as a versatile deadly wingestriker, and investing in the young Belgian prospect Jérémy Doku. But the unexplainable loss of Raphinha to Leeds put a huge stain on the window, losing the highest performing offensive asset and only quality left footed winger, thus preventing Stéphan for playing with two inverted wingers like the past seasons...
And as far as results are, the club started like a cannonball (just like last season), ranking first after 6 matchdays and undefeated for another week. But, again just like last year, the start of the European Campaign really took its toll on the team, recording a sensationnal November month (6 defeats and a draw) and plumetting to the mid domestic table. Worse thing is, Rennes only managed to score 1 point in the UCL while performing more than decently, and being far from the embarassement they were supposed to be. But a severe lack of efficiency (3 goals, 2 being pens for more than 50 shots) on both areas, crippling injuries of key players (Camavinga, Maouassa, Terrier) and bad luck (Nzonzi suspended for kicking a bottle of water, Dalbert conceding 2 pens and getting a red in the first 40min vs Chelsea etc) meant the end of the club's Europeans aspirations, even missing on a well deserved EL knockout stage.
Fortunately, the month of December was a turning point with 4 victories in that many matchs (then again, last season the team went also undefeated in December after being kicked out of EL), and ends the year in a solid and promising 4th place.
Best player : Steven Nzonzi
Rennes's principle asset this season is definitely its midfield. The trio of Nzonzi, Camavinga, Bourigeaud is one of the strongest in the league, and is the main reason the team has shifted from a quick projecting offensive playstyle to a controlling, great at combining one. And out of those, Steven Nzonzi is probably the best element for the team. His calm and collected attitude bring serenity to the play, and you'll always see him go back in front of the CBs to allow nice and proper start of the play. His vision and quality of pass is something we've never had in Rennes, and his defensive positionning allows Camavinga to shine as a box to box midfielder.
Revelation : Adrien Truffert
After the long injury of our star left back Faitout Maouassa and the disappointing performances of emergency loaned Dalbert to fill his role, young academy player Truffert took it upon himself to secure the left flank, providing an assist for the equalizer and scoring the winning goal in his first appearance vs Monaco. After that, he managed solid regular performances, showing good defending for his age, and a rare crossing quality in front.
Final place : 3rd-5th
If we get spared by the injuries (which should be, given we won't have to play 3 times a week anymore), and manage to fix our efficiency problems up front (the infamous 15 shots on the post in 17 matchs), we should be a force to be reckoned with for the remainder of the year. I only rate Lille, Lyon, Paris and maybe Montpellier as being a better side than Rennes, though Marseille always somehow manage to get good results despite their level of play. I expect us to keep growing as we've done so far.

Olympique de Marseille by LondonNoodles

What could have been? If there was a movie made on OM's 2020-21 first half, that would be its title. Some of us would say we're almost relieved that Marseille is not in the top 3 at the end of the calendar year, as it would paint a false and unfair representation of the poor quality of this group, and the sadness we've felt watching an empty Velodrome filled with so little ambition. Yet, despite the horrible Champions League campaign that will be forgotten as "an accident", Marseille have not only won enough games to be in the podium race (with 2 postponed games to play), they've showed glimpses of collective talent, like in the first half of the game against Monaco, or the first half against Rennes, or even again the first half against Nantes! See a pattern here? Yes that's right, before trying to confront our ligue 1 rivals, our biggest challenge yet again will be to face our worst enemy : ourselves! As is tradition alongside Christmas presents and Provence's 13 desserts, we will be thrilled by the many names of star european forwards that will pour in the press until eventually we settle for the one name that no one really wanted. But the question for 2021 really is : if this team can step up and find the missing gears, what could be?
Best player : Steve Mandanda
Crazy to think of how many points he must have saved us in his career and in this half season alone. What a legend of the club.
Revelation : Pape Gueye
Didn't get much playtime yet but showed undeniable qualities, the game against Rennes before his red card he was absolutely phenomenal on the pitch. Thank you Turpin!
Final place : 4th
PSG will reclaim their crown, Lille look solid second, Lyon will fight it out and probably get above us.

Montpellier HSC by JeanneHusse

It's been a great start of the season for Montpellier, despite our current 8th place. We fixed our main problem from last season, which was us getting plowed by everyone when playing away from home, and if it wasn't for a few surprising loss (Dijon, Lille), we would be sitting around the 4-5th place right now. Der Zakarian even found some tactical flexibility, by departing from his beloved 3-5-2 and trying out a very offensive 4-3-3, led by a Mavdidi-Delort-Labord front 3. More surprisingly, he doesn't hesitate to field a midfield that would make Guardiola proud, by using one sentinel (usually Ferri) and two offensive midfielder, Savanier and Mollet. We can now be more adaptive depending on the type of opponent we're facing.
While Savanier is by far our most gifted player, and the beloved son of La Paillade, he's been suffering a few injuries recently, enough for Andy Delort to steal the spotlight and be our starplayer. The man has been scoring screamers left and right, pressing like a madman and feeding assists to Laborde, forming one of the best attacking duo in the league this season.
Most of the team is pretty much the same as last year, but we really improved on our wingbacks. Replacing Oyongo on the left, Ristic is probably this season's revelation. He's no Bédimo or Roussillon yet, but he's shown great promise, whether it's on a back-5 or a back-4. On the other side, Souquet, while being useful, was never that great a wingback. Thankfully, Junior Sambia finally stepped up to the plate after years of disappointing performances as a midfielder. Now, he's killing it on the wing and we can finally end the mouring of Ruben Aguilar's departure to Monaco.
If we keep at it, and don't repeat the same mistake against smaller teams, we're in contention to grab a Europa League spot. We've shown against Lille that we can battle it out with the best teams in the league, and apart from the current top4, I don't see a team that is so clearly above us. It'll be tough, but this might finally be the year we get this freaking 5th place !
Best player : Andy Delort
Revelation : Mihailo Ristić
Final place : 5th

Angers SCO by EastOfEden_

The fans went into this season a bit worried given the turmoil at the helm of the club (our director of football and talisman Olivier Pickeu being fired after 14 years of service, our president being sued for sexual assault...) and the loss of key players during the transfer window (Santamaria and Ait Nouri most of all), with very little of the big money made on transfers over the last few years being reinvested (Pepe, Toko Ekambi, Reine Adelaide, Tait). But as usual we've been very pleasantly surprised by the performance of the team, although nothing should surprise us from Stephane Moulin, who manages to have this team play pragmatic (some may say defensive) football and get results when it counts.
The core of the team, with the exception of the departing Santamaria and Ait Nouri, has been mostly unchanged, and the new recruits Bernardoni in goal (who is without a doubt our club's revelation this season) and Coulibaly in midfield have gelled nicely with the team. The biggest change has been the repositioning of Fulgini as a 10, which has allowed him to shine and contribute quite a few goals and assists as our best player of the first half of the season.
Best player : Angelo Fulgini
Revelation : Paul Bernardoni
Final place : 9th-11th

OGC Nice by erjiin

A mid-season crash after a promising start. After a nice (lol!) mercato, saluted by the press and almost all supporters, the season looked interesting. A lot of departures, almost all key posts reinforced, some youngsters in defense to play with Dante, the arrival of Morgan Schneiderlin, Rony Lopes, Hassane Kamara, the young forward Amine Gouiri and after a while of Jeff Reine-Adélaïde. The team seemed ready for Ligue 1 and Europa League... It began slowly with Patrick Vieira still struggling to find his way (and to convince the supporters he was the right man). However after a logical defeat again PSG at matchday 4, the machine seemed to take off and at matchday 9 the club was classed 4th, with a convincing draw against Lille (1st at this time) and a 0-3 win at Angers. Unfortunately at Angers happened also THE drama: Dante, captain and technical leader of the team has been badly injured (ACL) until the end of the season. It turns out the team and particularly the young CBs weren't ready at all for this. After 5 defeats including one at home against the last of Ligue 1, one against Monaco in the derby of Côte d'Azur and an elimination in Europa League, due to his incapacity to solve the problems, Patrick Vieira has been fired and replaced by his assistant Adrian Ursea. Adrian Ursea himself has barely managed to do better than Vieira but must compose with injured players (Dante, Atal, a lot of others), out of form players (Lopes, Dolberg), a prone to mistakes team (at least one goal leading mistake per game in recent games) and even a COVID outbreak at the facilities. Now the team is 12th, depressed and has a huuuge need: an experimented CB (and maybe also cocaine but it seems it's not allowed during games) However not everything is dark and some players have delivered: JRA has been very interesting lately, Amine Gouiri is a joy to watch, Lotomba is a good RB and Hassane Kamara a good LB.
Best player : Jeff Reine-Adélaïde
Revelation : Amine Gouiri
Final place : 6th
The club is looking for defensive reinforcement, as i'm optimistic I believe that with them and the comeback of injured players, we will do much much better.

Girondins de Bordeaux by NotMeladroit

After an eventful summer highlighted by a controversial logo change, a close call in the yearly DNCG hearing and the appointment of Jean-Louis Gasset only 11 days before the start of the season, Bordeaux started the season pretty well with 9 points in the first 6 games and only 2 goals conceded with 5 clean sheets. The Girondins didn’t concede a single goal in their first five games at home starting the season with an impressive 3 goalless ties streak! The end of 2020 was less impressive with 18 goals conceded in 11 games and 3 defeats at home in the last 4 games. The month of November was a clear example of Bordeaux’s incontinency this season from a 4-0 defeat at Monaco with 3 goals conceded in 4 minutes to 4 points earned in 2 games away at Rennes and PSG.
Best player : Hatem Ben Arfa
Despite being signed only in October and after only 158 minutes played in the 2019/2020 season at Real Valladolid, Hatem Ben Arfa is already a key part of Bordeaux offence being involved in 1/3 of the goals scored this season with 2 goals (2 game winning goals) and 4 assists, all of them in the last 7 games of 2020.
Revelation : Paul Baysse
Paul Baysse shining with his hometown club at 32 is unexpected but very welcomed. After not playing a single professional game with Bordeaux at the start of his career, Paul Baysse returned to the club in the winter of 2018. But the rise of upcoming star Jules Koundé made him ride the bench and being loaned out to Caen for the 2018/2019 season. He returned from his loan last season but was put in the fridge by Paulo Sousa and didn’t play a single minute. But injuries to habitual starters Pablo and Laurent Koscielny and trust put in him by coach Jean-Louis Gasset made him the center-back with the most minutes played so far and a key part to Bordeaux main strength, its defence ranked 7th in the league.
Final place : 9th-14th
Unless Bordeaux goes into a hot streak to end the season like they used to do to qualify for Europe this past decade, they will finish midtable between 9th and 14th too far from European spots battle but comfy enough from any relegation scares. The defence is the main strength of the team but the team is not well drill enough to be consistent over a full season and the offence is underwhelming, already being too Ben-Arfa dependant, despite having interesting offensive players.

FC Nantes by qqsharp

In view of the general situation of the club :

A mafia president involved in large-scale tax fraud cases
An unofficial "sports director" even more crooked, who led the club to a raid on the training centre for dubious transfers.
The appointment of Domenech, a mediocre coach, unfamiliar with modern football and deeply irritating, who pushes the limits of the absurd and ends up turning the fans against the management.
The probable closed-door sessions for the rest of the season that will undermine the atmosphere of a normally boiling stadium
An already limited workforce with executives in decline (Pallois, Touré) and probably ready to be plundered in January
A series of catastrophic matches in progress reminiscent of Strasbourg 2007-2008

I don't see how Nantes could end up in any other place than the last one. If it could at least give us the opportunity to get rid of those bastards at the head of the club who are always trying to smear our reputation...
Best player : Ludovic Blas
We don't score much, but he is always dangerous and has managed to take over from Simon and Bamba, who are like the team at the beginning of the season, weak. Fast, sharp in front, unfortunately a little bit inconsistent but a really interesting player.
Revelation : Randal Kolo Muani
By dint of looking for mediocre 9s everywhere (Coulibaly, Emond...), we end up realising that when you are Nantes the solution often comes from within. Twice man of the match (without scoring a goal but not being spoiled by the VAR...), he has a sense of purpose and it is only sadly logical that we talk about a departure in January for him.
Final place : 20th

RC Strasbourg by Colyris

This season started with a good number of players affected by the COVID just before the start of the season, which must have complicated the end of the preparation, and the start of the league. It should also be noted the absence of fans at home, Normally La Meinau is almost always full. There we have only one victory at home out of 8 matches. It's not brilliant. But the absence of the fans does not explain everything.
To put it simply, it's going to be a complicated season.
The main problem of Racing, for me, is quite simple: we concede too many goals for God's sake!
Defence hasn't been our strong point since our return to L1 but we've taken 32 goals in 17 games. That's almost 2 goals per game, it's complicated to get good results like that. Hopefully Sels will come back soon and correct this problem a little bit. Clean sheets guys please.
The positive point of this beginning of the season is probably the Ajorque/Diallo duo who are doing rather well, 6 and 5 goals respectively. I was rather skeptical about the arrival of Diallo at the very end of the mercato (10M€ from Metz) but considering the results it works.
Best player : Mohamed Simakan
I mention a defender whereas just before I said that defence is the problem, but Simakan is overall solid (even if 2 handballs -> 2 penalties against Metz =/). And above all there are starting to be rumours of contact with Milan. I have no illusions with the current situation (thanks COVID + Mediapro) we'll probably sell but I hope at least at the end of the season and at a good price (more than 15 M please). Seriously PSG are buying Diallo, Kehrer 30M+, ASSE is selling these 2 defenders 30M+ and so on and I feel that we will accept an offer at 15M-). Otherwise probably Ajorque, with 6 goals / 5 assists.
Revelation : Habib Diallo
It's not really a revelation for league 1, but Habib Diallo is interesting over this half season (5 goals / 3 assists). I would like to see the Ajorque/Diallo duo start more matches together.
Final place : 16-17th
I think it will depend on the resumption. The January matches are against Nîmes, Lens, St-Étienne, Dijon and Reims. They are almost all direct opponents for the survival.
If we win 4 out of 5 matches (it's Christmas, let me dream.) we could maybe finish 12-13th, but it's likely to be a battle to the end for survival, hoping to finish above them, like 16-17th.

Ligue 2

Toulouse FC by THZHDY

After a less than ideal 2020 (the club went winless in 23 consecutive games from october 31st 2019 to september 26 2020, (331 days) and a much deserved relegation, the club has found new hope. New ownership in the name of RedBird capital and Damien Comolli's leadership, a new manager (Patrice Garande) many new transfers and a focus on youth academy players allow us to sit in 3rd at the winter break, only 2 points behind first place. Since that 3-1 against Auxerre that marked the end of the winless streak, Toulouse have won 9, drawn 3 and lost only 1 game (a 4-5 thriller against Valenciennes, with their right back scoring 4 goals)
What happened? Solid recruitment, and players who look like they finally give a shit. Most of the new signings making an extremely positive impact. Stijn Spierings, a Dutch CM signed from Bulgaria, scored 6 and assisted 1 in 10 games (5 penalties) and has brought much needed composure to the team. Branco van den Boomen is a dead ball master, Brecht Dejaegere is a leader in the midfield, and Rhys Healey is on a major scoring spree, having scored in each of the last six games.
Top scorers: Healey (8), Spierings (6), Antiste (6)
Best player : Rhys Healey
His scoring spree earned him the Ligue 2 player of the month award for December.
Revelation : Amine Adli
His new role as a second striker and his partnership with Healey is amazing, he's scored some beautiful goals, and he's an academy product.
Final place : 3rd and a playoff loss
We have a tough schedule ahead, we play all of the top 8 in the next 7 games, so if we manage to get out of that still within reach of the top 2 I can see us getting promoted again, I'm hoping for 1st place obviously.

AJ Auxerre by PrisonersofFate

Auxerre has been in a bad situation for years. Once a strong team in french football, L1 Champions in 96, french cups and a strong academy, things went sour with the relegation. A chinese businessman bought the club back and invested enough for them to survive.
Auxerre in L2 have been disappointing since they got relegated. It's maybe the first time they have a shout to get promoted again, and that's thanks to the good work of Jean-Marc Furlan.
Furlan is really a L2 coach, who will promote a team often (Troyes twice, Brest). He tries to get good and offensive football and things start to work now.
Best player : Mickaël Le Bihan
Mickaël Le Bihan scored 13 times already and is the biggest threat in the team, he is clearly the best scorer of the league.
Revelation : Hamza Sakhi
Of course, going to the stadium this season is hard, and even watching the games thanks to Mediapro (I canceled my suscribtion) but I always liked to watch Hamza Sakhi, a hard working and creative midfielder.
Final place : 5th
I reckon Auxerre can push to the top 5 and play the playoff to get promoted again. The city would need that.

En Avant Guingamp by sgdbdjos

A season to (already) forget. No more ambitions to climb in Ligue 1 : remaining in Ligue 2 is the objective now. 15th after 17 games, 16 points taken, 16 goals scored (0.94 point and goal / game).
A disaster, given that the EAG is the 3rd budget of L2. 10 games without a win series in progress...
The causes: players are not at their true level, no team spirit, character or soul.
Coach Bazdarevic is struggling to convince, and the two men who made him come (Gravelaine and Desplat) are no longer at the club.
A "novice" and very (too) discreet president who has just taken the position. A too large staff (31 players) which should be reduced to the winter mercato.
We are clearly on a season of transition, it will be necessary to avoid the disaster of a descent in national and rebuild behind.
Best player : Ronny Rodelin
31 years old, 2 goals and 1 assist, he is one of the only engines of the Guingamp attack this season.
Revelation : Matthias Phaeton
20 years old, he has already scored three goals in 9 games, each time coming back into the game.
Final place : 12th

National 1

Red Star FC by ziggurqt

I didn’t want to miss the opportunity to talk about Red Star. But before talking about their whereabouts, a bit of trivia, shall we? Contrary to popular belief, the name of the club isn't a translation of “Étoile Rouge”, as it was named Red Star from the very beginning in 1897 by its founding father, namely Jules Rimet. For those who missed the story, Rimet was instrumental in development of football in the early age, as the founder of the Fédération Internationale de Football Association (FIFA) and the first World Cup trophy held his name until the actual trophy went lost (a first time in 66 in England) and probably melted for its gold in Brazil later on. I actually planned to say much more, but I don’t want to hijack the thread for my own profit (maybe I should plan a more thorough thread?). Anyway, being born and bred in Seine-Saint-Denis for 30+ years (but living in Montpellier now), this club is all kind of awesome, despite never being in the front stage in our living memory.
So, where’s the club now? Red Star plays in National 1 (third division). The start of the season was rocky to say the least (no win in the first four games), but they came back brilliantly and now are holding a solid third place (2 points behind the first). To tell the truth, and not being ashamed about it, I had a kind of football burnout just before the whole COVID situation and I’m still holding back. But the club has an amazing network to keep tabs on the ongoings of the club. So, truthfully, I haven’t watched a single game in its entirety since 20/21 but I feel I can still provide decent insights.
Best player : Cheikh Ndoye & Mayoro N'Doye
Revelation : Damien Durand
Final place : Promoted

Table

Ligue 1 Table

Next matchday

Wednesday 06/01, 19:00
FC Nantes - Stade Rennais
FC Metz - Girondins de Bordeaux
FC Lorient - AS Monaco
Stade Brestois - OGC Nice
RC Strasbourg - Nîmes Olympique
Wednesday 06/01, 21:00
Olympique Lyonnais - RC Lens
Olympique de Marseille - Montpellier Hérault SC
AS Saint-Étienne - Paris Saint-Germain
Stade de Reims - Dijon FCO
Lille OSC - Angers SCO
Previous matchdays :
Season 2020-2021
M1 - M2 - M3 - M4 - M5 - M6 - M7 - M8 - M9 - M10 - M11 - M12 - M13 - M14 - M15 - M16 - M17
Season 2019-2020
M12 - M13 - M14 - M15 - M16 - M17 - M18 - M19 - M20 - M21 - M22 - M23 - M24 - M25 - M26 - M27 - M28

Le Bilan - Ligue 1 Matchday 17 : Everybody Hates Raymond

The bizarre 2020 year finally comes to an end for Ligue 1 with this 17th matchday of which all ten matches have been played on yesterday night (half at 19:00, half at 21:00). Lyon wanted to confirm their good form, Marseille had to rebound after two disappointing results while Lille had a tough match away in Montpellier.

Appetizers

Rennes ends the year in the best possible way with a fourth straight win at home against Metz. Undesirable a couple of months ago, Clément Grenier regained his spot in the team and scored the sole goal of the match.
The good surprise of the first half of the season won again last night. Lens beat Brest 2-1 in a game they dominated clearly. With this victory, the northerners finish the year at the 7th place. Not too bad for a promoted team !
Reims is bouncing back with seven points out of the last possible nine. This time they beat Bordeaux away 3-1 with another goal from Boulaye Dia (already 9 goals this season). While it's obviously a precious result for Reims as it pushes them away from the relegation zone, for Bordeaux however it's a pretty terrible one as it confirms once and for all that they will play for nothing this season.
Nice still isn't able to get positive results on a consistent basis. Even up 2-0 at half-time against a relegation candidate they managed to fumble the three points (though when you shot 3 times while your opponent does it 24 times it's bound to happen). Robson Bambu, definitely not the greatest recruit of the club, fouled Grbić in the penalty area at the 82nd minute, getting a red card in the process and allowing the austrian player to equalize. Lorient gets out of the red zone, though only due to a better goal difference.
The explosive attacking Montpellier duo stroke again. Gaëtan Laborde and Andy Delort, author of a magnificent bicycle kick increased their respective tallies. Unfortunately, that wasn't enough as Lille scored three times (Weah, Ikoné and Yılmaz at the 87th minute). Mike Maignan made a miraculous save at the last second to preserve the three points. Lille finishes the year at the 2nd place while Montpellier falls 8th after a difficult december. And in January they'll have to play Marseille, Monaco, Paris and Lens...
With an easy 3-0 win over Nantes, Lyon claims the first place ahead of Lille (same number of points but +20 vs +19 in goal difference). Once again, Kadewere and Toko Ekambi scored (their respective 7th and 9th goal this season) and Aouar and Paquetá were brilliant. A perfect ending of the year for the lyonnais after a rough start. For Nantes, the season keeps being disastrous. Fortunately, they've got a trump card up the sleeve (see below).
Monaco-Saint-Étienne might look like a random midfield match on paper (and to be fair, it's the case this season) but let's not forget those clubs represent 22% of all french league titles. And les Verts must be pretty disappointed by the result given they were up 2-1 and playing with 11 men to 10 starting from the 35th minute and that they shot 18 times throughout the 90 minutes. But Monaco was more clinical as they scored twice in as many shots by Sofiane Diop and Kevin Volland (his 7th goal since the start, tied with Ben Yedder now). In the end a result that will satisfy nobody but that Monaco will consider as the best they could have hoped.
What a bad ending of a year from Marseille. After a loss to Rennes and a draw against Reims, they did even worse this time in Angers where they were defeated 2-1. They even conceded a goal from Loïs Diony which is unforgivable (though the goal is beautiful) and Dimitri Payet missed a penalty, an exercise where he has only a 62% ratio in Ligue 1 (8/13). Marseille falls to the fifth place. Though they still have two postponed matches to play they can at best reach fourth while they could have been first a few weeks ago.
Deprived from 10 players (ten) due to injuries, Paris didn't have to worry too much against Strasbourg. Though the score has blown up in the last 10 minutes, it was still a comfortable evening for the parisians. That also allowed Timothée Pembele, 18 years old, to score his first goal. Quite logically this good performance resulted in the sacking of Thomas Tuchel a few hours later. Another peaceful day in the PSG world.
35 goals were scored this matchday, a tied record with the 7th and the 10th.

Main Course

Matches

Home	Score	Away
OGC Nice	2-2	FC Lorient
Lotomba 18', Reine-Adélaïde 34'		Moffi 49', Grbić 82'
Stade Rennais	1-0	FC Metz
Grenier 52'
Nîmes Olympique	1-3	Dijon FCO
Ahlinvi 31'		Konaté 75', Baldé 77', Konaté 90'+4
Girondins de Bordeaux	1-3	Stade de Reims
Hwang 73'		Abdelhamid 15', Dia 18', Munetsi 88'
RC Lens	2-1	Stade Brestois
Kalimuendo 11', Sotoca (p) 34'		Charbonnier (p) 90'+4
Angers SCO	2-1	Olympique de Marseille
Pereira Lage 4', Diony 23'		Rongier 75'
Paris Saint-Germain	4-0	RC Strasbourg
Pembele 18', Mbappé 79', Gueye 88', Kean 90'+1
Olympique Lyonnais	3-0	FC Nantes
Toko Ekambi 4', Kadewere 37', Paquetá 44'
AS Monaco	2-2	AS Saint-Étienne
Diop 7', Volland 48'		Debuchy 21', Bouanga (p) 29'
Montpellier Hérault SC	2-3	Lille OSC
Laborde 57', Delort 70'		Weah 23', Ikoné (p) 68', Yılmaz 86'

Table

#	Team	Pts	P	W	D	L	GF	GA	GD
1	Olympique Lyonnais	36	17	10	6	1	34	14	+20
2	Lille OSC	36	17	10	6	1	31	12	+19
3	Paris Saint-Germain	35	17	11	2	4	39	10	+29
4	Stade Rennais	31	17	9	4	4	26	19	+7
5	Olympique de Marseille	28	15	8	4	3	22	15	+7
6	AS Monaco	27	17	8	3	6	28	25	+3
7	RC Lens	27	16	8	3	5	26	24	+2
8	Montpellier HSC	27	17	8	3	6	29	28	+1
9	Angers SCO	27	17	8	3	6	23	26	-3
10	FC Metz	23	17	6	5	6	19	17	+2
11	Stade Brestois	23	17	7	2	8	28	31	-3
12	OGC Nice	22	16	6	4	6	21	22	-1
13	Girondins de Bordeaux	22	17	6	4	7	18	20	-2
14	AS Saint-Étienne	18	17	4	6	7	18	25	-7
15	Stade de Reims	17	17	4	5	8	24	28	-4
16	FC Nantes	15	17	3	6	8	18	30	-12
17	RC Strasbourg	14	17	4	2	11	22	32	-10
18	FC Lorient	12	17	3	3	11	17	31	-14
19	Dijon FCO	12	17	2	6	9	12	26	-14
20	Nîmes Olympique	12	17	3	3	11	14	34	-20

1-2 Champions League group stage
3 Champions League qualifiers round 3
4 Europa League group stage
5 Europa Conference League play-offs
18 Relegation play-offs
19-20 Relegation to Ligue 2

Goals

Player	Team	Goals	This week
Kylian Mbappé	Paris Saint-Germain	12	(+1)
Boulaye Dia	Stade de Reims	10	(+1)
Karl Toko Ekambi	Olympique Lyonnais	9	(+1)
Andy Delort	Montpellier HSC	8	(+1)
Memphis Depay	Olympique Lyonnais	.
Wissam Ben Yedder	AS Monaco	7
Tino Kadewere	Olympique Lyonnais	.	(+1)
Gaël Kakuta	RC Lens	.
Moise Kean	Paris Saint-Germain	.	(+1)
Kevin Volland	AS Monaco	.	(+1)
Burak Yılmaz	Lille OSC	.	(+1)
Ludovic Ajorque	RC Strasbourg	6
Gaëtan Laborde	Montpellier HSC	.	(+1)
Ibrahima Niane	FC Metz	.
Florian Thauvin	Olympique de Marseille	.
Stéphane Bahoken	Angers SCO	5
Mama Baldé	Dijon FCO	.	(+1)
Jonathan Bamba	Lille OSC	.
Ludovic Blas	FC Nantes	.
Irvin Cardona	Stade Brestois	.
Habib Diallo	RC Strasbourg	.
Ignatius Ganago	RC Lens	.
Amine Gouiri	OGC Nice	.
Yoane Wissa	FC Lorient	.
Yusuf Yazıcı	Lille OSC	.

Assists

Player	Team	Assists
Andy Delort	Montpellier HSC	6
Gaëtan Laborde	Montpellier HSC	.
Jonathan Bamba	Lille OSC	.
Florian Thauvin	Olympique de Marseille	.
Hatem Ben Arfa	Girondins de Bordeaux	4
Wissam Ben Yedder	AS Monaco	.
Memphis Depay	Olympique Lyonnais	.
Ángel Di María	Paris Saint-Germain	.
Kylian Mbappé	Paris Saint-Germain	.
Romain Perraud	Stade Brestois	.
Junior Sambia	Montpellier HSC	.
Pablo Sarabia	Paris Saint-Germain	.
Karl Toko Ekambi	Olympique Lyonnais	.
Burak Yılmaz	Lille OSC	.

COVID Championship

(May not be 100% accurate)

Team	COVID cases
OGC Nice	17
RC Lens	14
FC Nantes	10
RC Strasbourg	9
Montpellier Hérault SC	.
Olympique de Marseille	8
Paris Saint-Germain	.
Lille OSC	7
AS Saint-Étienne	.
Dijon FCO	5
AS Monaco	.
Nîmes Olympique	.
Stade Rennais	.
Olympique Lyonnais	4
Angers SCO	3
FC Metz	2
Girondins de Bordeaux	1
Stade Brestois	.
FC Lorient	.
Stade de Reims	.

Dessert

Top 3 Goals of the Week

#	Player	Match
1	Andy Delort	Montpellier Hérault SC vs Lille OSC
2	Loïs Diony	Angers SCO vs Olympique de Marseille
3	Idrissa Gueye	Paris Saint-Germain vs RC Strasbourg

Upwards

Lucas Paquetá : When Juninho came back in Lyon as a sporting director, most people were excited to see what his famous brazilian network was going to provide in terms of players for OL. The first brazilian he recruited however was not a player but a coach : Sylvinho. And that didn't go well as he was sacked two months later. Juninho lost some influence within the club as he had to accept Rudi Garcia who was the choice from Jean-Michel Aulas and the recently passed Gérard Houllier. Two transfer windows later, it's safe to say Juninho's footprint has been largely considered as a net positive. First, last winter it was Bruno Guimarães who came from Athletico Paranaense and whor revitalized OL's midfield. This summer, the best free-kicker of all time convinced the club to invest 20 M€ on a player who failed in AC Milan : Lucas Paquetá. The brazilian midfielder has proven right his sporting director as he immediately became a starter and in the last weeks has become the key player of OL in this period of grace they haven't known for a while. In fact, the last time Lyon had taken 36 points in the first 17 matchdays was in 2007-2008, the last season in which they ended victorious. Moreover, Paquetá has not even been defeated yet as an OL player with 9 wins and 2 draws in his first 11 matches. Combined with Bruno Guimarães and Houssem Aouar, Lyon's midfield has become its main strength. That was already the case during the golden era (Tiago, Juninho, Diarra, Essien, Källström).

Downwards

Nîmes Olympique : Good news for Dijon : they're not last anymore, for the first time since the 4th matchday. Unfortunately, that means someone else has to become the new lanterne rouge. Ironically enough, it's the first leader of the season Nîmes (after they opened their season with a 4-0 win over Brest) that has earned that not too glorious title. But that short parenthesis at the top must not make us forget that the Crocodiles have struggled for a while. Last year already they were saved by the decision to stop the season and relegate only two teams (rather than two plus a playoff) as they finished in 18th place, four points ahead of Amiens. This year, their third consecutive one in Ligue 1 (something they had not known since the late 1970's), has so far proven even more difficult and the current series (six matches without a win, including five losses). With the second worst attack and the worst defense of the league, it's hard to point any positive aspect on which Nîmes could base a possible rebound. Their next match is extremely important as it's away in Strasbourg, another relegation candidate. A must win before facing Lille and Marseille, two matches that shouldn't provide many points for the club from southern France.

In the gutter

FC Nantes : I usually try to vary for the Up/Down section and not to talk about a club recently discussed. And two weeks ago Nantes was already the topic of a bleak paragraph about how a former giant of french football had become anonymous. But this is a state of emergency as Waldemar Kita has apparently made the choice, for his 16th coach in 13 years at the helm of the club, to appoint the worst of the worst, a man who would make Tony Pulis a combination of Johan Cruyff and Bill Shankly : Raymond Domenech. The most hated person in the history of french football (tied with Harald Schumacher maybe), a man who selected players according to their astrological signs, who left his coaching career with the players rebelling against him in South Africa and who hasn't lead a club (Lyon) since 1993, prophet of a "pragmatic" football without identity will train players in the club in France the most known for his free flowing way to play (called "Jeu à la nantaise", unfortunately disappeared for almost 20 years now and the removal of Renyald Denoueix). To be fair to Waldemar Kita, the club was already going badly before he bought it. He simply prolonged the torture for 13 years now (and counting) and is about to deal the final blow.

L'Équipe Team of the Week

https://imgur.com/a/Za7w4fE

Quotes

Jean-Louis Gasset, Bordeaux coach :

Inexplicable. Maybe we were away on holiday for the first twenty minutes. There are groups like that who think about flip-flops, sunglasses and plane tickets. I didn't really think we could start like that. [...] When you're down 2-0 after twenty minutes, it's hard. Seventy-two hours after Strasbourg (2-0), it wasn't the same players, there was no intensity, no duels, no technique, it was a horror.

David Linarès, Dijon coach :

At half-time, we spoke collectively with words of mutual aid and solidarity. Up until then we had lacked a dose of realism, but there were intentions. We had to keep playing to stretch the Nîmes block. Tonight, we left the lanterne rouge, we went to dig deep within ourselves for that, but it should only be a step. We have shown some extra soul, but we are expecting a very difficult second part of the season.

Julien Stéphan, Rennes coach :

That's 12 points out of 12, 31 points in 17 days, it's a record for the club in the modern era. It's an exceptional record, when we had to manage the Champions League for the first time in our history, we hit the posts 13 times and had a long series of injuries. We can go on holiday.

André Villas-Boas, Marseille coach :

Today, we have nothing to say. We were very bad in the first period. We came back well in the second but we made too many mistakes before that allowed Angers to lead. We had a lot of trouble and bad luck on the penalty with Bernardoni's stop. In the first half, we made two gifts to Angers. [...] In the last three games, we didn't reach our goal. We weren't at the right level. It's a bad way to end the year, all the more so as our opponents in the rankings have done the work and we find ourselves in fifth place.

sgdbdjos, Guingamp fan and guarantor of decorum :

The "fdp" rates thrown in a chat increases during a Lyon match, it's statistical.

Next matchday

Wednesday 06/01, 19:00
FC Nantes - Stade Rennais
FC Metz - Girondins de Bordeaux
FC Lorient - AS Monaco
Stade Brestois - OGC Nice
RC Strasbourg - Nîmes Olympique
Wednesday 06/01, 21:00
Olympique Lyonnais - RC Lens
Olympique de Marseille - Montpellier Hérault SC
AS Saint-Étienne - Paris Saint-Germain
Stade de Reims - Dijon FCO
Lille OSC - Angers SCO
Thanks a lot to Hippemann and NotMeladroit for all the clips and the tables ! For more news about the best league in the world (except for the other four) and to improve your french, come and subscribe to /Ligue1.
All feedbacks are welcome !
Previous matchdays :
Season 2020-2021
M1 - M2 - M3 - M4 - M5 - M6 - M7 - M8 - M9 - M10 - M11 - M12 - M13 - M14 - M15 - M16
Season 2019-2020
M12 - M13 - M14 - M15 - M16 - M17 - M18 - M19 - M20 - M21 - M22 - M23 - M24 - M25 - M26 - M27 - M28

Le Bilan - Ligue 1 Matchday 14 : Penalty Party

The yearly beating of french clubs in european group stages has come to an end with two teams getting out (Paris in Champions League, Lille in Europa League) and the other three (Marseille, Rennes and Nice) managing to earn a whopping combined total of 7 points in 18 matches. Congrats to them. This weekend, the Ligue 1 teams started a little marathon of four matches in ten days before the winter break with an exciting Marseille-Monaco on saturday and a climactic Paris SG-Lyon on sunday night.

Appetizers

On the day it was announced that Mediapro, the new broadcaster of Ligue 1, was giving up for default of payment after only four months, the opening match of the matchday, usually the symbol of a festive weekend, was an appealing Saint-Étienne-Angers. Yes, Saint-Étienne-Angers. 0-0. Next.
Marseille made a statement in the race for the podium, beating Monaco, a direct rival, 2-1 on saturday afternoon, their sixth straight win in the league. Despite a larger possession and more chances throughout the game, the monégasques conceded two early goals from the Benedetto-Thauvin duo who exchanged assists with each other to get that early lead. After the loss in Lille to another european aiming team, Monaco concedes another loss, a definite halt after climbing up the rankings in the past weeks.
Lens-Montpellier was expected to be a pretty entertaining fixture and it was indeed. Even though the southerners took a healthy lead in the first 30 minutes, their opponents from the other side of the hexagon came back thanks to a lucky goal and a penalty. In the middle of the second half, Gaëtan Laborde, usually assister, gave Montpellier the three points and a fifth victory across their last six matches (the other one being the loss last week against PSG).
The clash between the teams-that-play-in-red-and-black-and-that-ashamed-the-whole-country-in-Europe resulted in a win for Rennes away in Nice with a goal from Mbaye Niang at the end of a game easily controlled by the Bretons. Despite a managerial change, Nice is still struggling to get back in form, their last win dating from a month and a half (same for Rennes before this one).
Speaking of teams that hadn't won in a long time, Lorient was part of this not really prestigious club until this sunday where they dispatched Nîmes 3-0 at home. The Merlus (Hakes in english) were finally rewarded for their quality of play and their lack of efficiency (six matches in a row without scoring). Nîmes on the other end continues to fall and hit the 18th place, synonymous of a playoff spot.
After a great start of the season, Metz is starting to struggle a bit, suffering a fifth match without a win, this time in Strasbourg, at the end of a high-scoring match (for Ligue 1 standards at least). Bronn and Nguette successively gave Metz the advantage but they were answered respectively by Simakan and Thomasson.
Three days after throwing the first place of their Europa League group at Celtic Park, Lille had the opportunity to reclaim another top position in the case of a misstep from PSG at Lyon. And they did the job with a splendid strike from Jonathan Bamba and a rocket of a header from José Fonte. After a solid first half, Bordeaux was dominated quite heavily throughout the last 45 minutes and despite a recent good form couldn't avoid the loss.
The most anticipated match of the week (arguably of the whole season even) unfortunately didn't provide the most entertaining spectacle. Lyon's domination in the first half was rewarded by a goal from Kadewere following a disastrous misunderstanding between Kimpembe and Paredes. With only one shot on target during the whole game, the parisians were barely able to provide any danger towards Anthony Lopes. With that win, their first at the Parc des Princes since 2007, Lyon takes the second place, ahead of their opponents of the day.
With 0,48 penalty per match, Ligue 1 tops the rankings among the top 5 leagues in Europe (ahead of Premier League with 0,47 and Bundesliga with 0,45). Another seven of them were whistled this weekend.

Main Course

Matches

Home	Score	Away
AS Saint-Étienne	0-0	Angers SCO

Olympique de Marseille	2-1	AS Monaco
Thauvin 5', Benedetto 13'		Ben Yedder (p) 79'
RC Lens	2-3	Montpellier Hérault SC
Omlin (og) 36', Kakuta (p) 50'		Mavididi 16', Mendes 26', Laborde 69'
OGC Nice	0-1	Stade Rennais
		Niang 28'
RC Strasbourg	2-2	FC Metz
Simakan 66', Thomasson 78'		Bronn (p) 35', Nguette 70'
FC Lorient	3-0	Nîmes Olympique
Boisgard 2', Hamel (p) 29', Wissa 90'
FC Nantes	1-1	Dijon FCO
Simon (p) 24'		Konaté 54'
Stade Brestois	2-1	Stade de Reims
Honorat 30', Mounié 77'		Zeneli 65'
Lille OSC	2-1	Girondins de Bordeaux
Bamba 17', Fonte 45'		Bašić 30'
Paris Saint-Germain	0-1	Olympique Lyonnais
		Kadewere 35'

Table

#	Team	Pts	P	W	D	L	GF	GA	GD
1	Lille OSC	29	14	8	5	1	26	10	+16
2	Olympique Lyonnais	29	14	8	5	1	25	11	+14
3	Paris Saint-Germain	28	14	9	1	4	33	10	+23
4	Olympique de Marseille	27	12	8	3	1	19	10	+9
5	Montpellier HSC	26	14	8	2	4	25	21	+4
6	AS Monaco	23	14	7	2	5	25	20	+5
7	Angers SCO	23	14	7	2	5	20	22	-2
8	Stade Rennais	22	14	6	4	4	20	18	+2
9	RC Lens	21	13	6	3	4	21	21	+0
10	Stade Brestois	21	14	7	0	7	23	25	-2
11	Girondins de Bordeaux	19	14	5	4	5	14	15	-1
12	OGC Nice	18	13	5	3	5	16	16	+0
13	FC Metz	17	14	4	5	5	15	16	-1
14	FC Nantes	14	14	3	5	6	15	23	-8
15	AS Saint-Étienne	13	14	3	4	7	12	20	-8
16	RC Strasbourg	11	14	3	2	9	20	26	-6
17	FC Lorient	11	14	3	2	9	15	24	-9
18	Nîmes Olympique	11	14	3	2	9	11	27	-16
19	Stade de Reims	10	14	2	4	8	17	24	-7
20	Dijon FCO	9	14	1	6	7	9	22	-13

1-2 Champions League group stage
3 Champions League qualifiers round 3
4 Europa League group stage
5 Europa Conference League play-offs
18 Relegation play-offs
19-20 Relegation to Ligue 2

Goals

Player	Team	Goals	This week
Kylian Mbappé	Paris Saint-Germain	10
Boulaye Dia	Stade de Reims	8
Karl Toko Ekambi	Olympique Lyonnais	7
Wissam Ben Yedder	AS Monaco	.	(+1)
Andy Delort	Montpellier HSC	6
Memphis Depay	Olympique Lyonnais	.
Gaël Kakuta	RC Lens	.	(+1)
Ibrahima Niane	FC Metz	.
Burak Yılmaz	Lille OSC	.
Ludovic Ajorque	RC Strasbourg	5
Stéphane Bahoken	Angers SCO	.
Jonathan Bamba	Lille OSC	.	(+1)
Irvin Cardona	Stade Brestois	.
Ignatius Ganago	RC Lens	.
Tino Kadewere	Olympique Lyonnais	.	(+1)
Moise Kean	Paris Saint-Germain	.
Florian Thauvin	Olympique de Marseille	.	(+1)
Kevin Volland	AS Monaco	.
Yoane Wissa	FC Lorient	.	(+1)

Assists

Player	Team	Assists
Gaëtan Laborde	Montpellier HSC	6
Jonathan Bamba	Lille OSC	.
Florian Thauvin	Olympique de Marseille	.
Andy Delort	Montpellier HSC	5
Memphis Depay	Olympique Lyonnais	4
Kylian Mbappé	Paris Saint-Germain	.
Romain Perraud	Stade Brestois	.
Pablo Sarabia	Paris Saint-Germain	.
Karl Toko Ekambi	Olympique Lyonnais	.
Burak Yılmaz	Lille OSC	.

COVID Championship

(May not be 100% accurate)

Team	COVID cases
OGC Nice	17
RC Lens	14
FC Nantes	10
RC Strasbourg	9
Montpellier Hérault SC	.
Olympique de Marseille	8
Paris Saint-Germain	.
Lille OSC	7
AS Saint-Étienne	.
Dijon FCO	5
AS Monaco	.
Nîmes Olympique	.
Stade Rennais	.
Olympique Lyonnais	4
Angers SCO	3
FC Metz	2
Girondins de Bordeaux	1
Stade Brestois	.
FC Lorient	.
Stade de Reims	.

Dessert

Top 3 Goals of the Week

#	Player	Match
1	Arbër Zeneli	Stade Brestois vs Stade de Reims
2	Franck Honorat	Stade Brestois vs Stade de Reims
3	Jonathan Bamba	Lille OSC vs Girondins de Bordeaux

Upwards

Stade Brestois : Le Bilan didn't talk about Brest yet, not in length at least, and it's a mistake because the team has certainly been one of the most interesting to follow this season. You just have to look at the table to understand what kind of team it is. With seven wins, seven losses and no draw, the 6th best attack and the 3rd worst defense of the league, the bretons, led by the former Dijon coach Olivier Dall'Oglio, have gambled everything on entertainment in a safer Bielsist way. And it works. Of course they have conceded a lot of goals, of course they have yet to play Paris, Lyon and Montpellier but as they have shown in the past, much like their english counterparts, they are not afraid of big teams. They beat Lille 3-2, Monaco 1-0 and lost 3-2 a match they should have won against Marseille. With four wins in the last five matchdays, the brestois have given themselves a large cushion so that they don't have to think yet about an eventual return in Ligue 2. Oh yes, we didn't mention it yet, they got promoted only last year.

Downwards

David Guion : After correctly predicting the dismissals of Patrick Vieira and Christian Gourcuff in the past two weeks, Le Bilan has basically become the equivalent of the Washington Post of french football, no less. Pulitzer, here we come. Anyway, there's another man whose job is more and more in danger. And it would be by far the saddest of the three if David Guion was showed the door. Not that it wouldn't do good (the way Reims has been playing for a long time now is quite shocking) but what he has done for the club in the past three seasons must not be overlooked. For his first year in Champagne in 2017-2018, Guion led Reims to a Ligue 2 champion title (getting the UNFP best Ligue 2 coach trophy in the process), followed by an 8th place, then a 6th place (though the season was stopped early) and a first participation in a european competition in almost sixty years (stopped early in playoffs against the modest MOL Fehérvár). Sadly, this season has not been good for David Guion and his team. At all. Reims curretnly sits at the 19th place, has not won in the last five games and does not seem to have many assets to get back on track. Their reputation of a solid defensive team has disappeared and it would be unrealistic to ask Boulaye Dia (8 goals already) to carry the entire attack by himself for the whole season. Even worse, Reims president said he wouldn't oppose a departure from his striker. If he does indeed leave, Reims would need a miraculous replacement to save themselves from a sure relegation.
Paris Saint-Germain : We may not get a lot of opportunities to have PSG in this category so let's not waste this golden one. Indeed, Paris has struggled lately in the league. With 4 points taken out of the last possible 12, already 4 losses in 14 matchdays (more than Lyon, Lille and Marseille combined), Paris has logically let go its top spot, reclaimed by Lille, their opponents on next sunday. In fact, PSG had not lost four times this early since 2009-2010, a season in which they ended 13th and Jean-Eudes Maurice had regular play time. Of course Paris won't finish 13th this year, they still have the best attack and the best defense of the league but it's clear that the crucial european matches against Leipzig, Manchester United and Istanbul Başakşehir have put an emotional and physical toll on players already tired since the end of Champions League this summer. One thing is certain though : for the first time since 2017, the league title is in play.

L'Équipe Team of the Week

https://imgur.com/a/C6My1P3

Quotes

André Villas-Boas, Marseille coach :

I am very, very happy. With our different systems, we have an element of surprise that we didn't have last year. It's harder for the opponents to prepare their match and it's interesting for us. Emotionally, it was very hard with the end of the european adventure. So to do a performance like that, I say bravo to the team.

Morgan Schneiderlin, Nice midfielder :

We have to keep this collective spirit, we take fewer goals but we score less or not at all, it's hard to win matches. Believe me, the fans are disappointed but we, the players, are the first to be affected by this situation. We are keen to rectify all this before the break. We don't want to spend a season playing nothing, getting bored. We're going to do everything we can to win on Wednesday.

Christophe Pelissier, Lorient coach :

It is a success both offensively and defensively. It's a perfect evening. It's a relief because it was a burden not to score, not to be rewarded. We must savour it and recover well. This victory allows us to be in the running, with 4-5 teams (Strasbourg, Nîmes, Reims, Dijon). We have a mini-Championship (for survival) where we have to perform well. We have to win that championship.

Thomas Tuchel, Paris coach :

We saw a very mentally tired team. I had the impression that the last sequence (Manchester United - Montpellier - Basaksehir) was too much for us. We missed even some easy passes. It's the fault of all of us, me first, the team. It wasn't serious enough, we must have enough quality to win every match. That remains my responsibility, that's clear.

Rerel, Paris supporter but football connoisseur first and foremost :

You give money to Arsenal, they turn it into shit.

Next matchday

Wednesday 16/12, 19:00
Dijon FCO - Lille OSC
Montpellier Hérault SC - FC Metz
Angers SCO - RC Strasbourg
Nîmes Olympique - OGC Nice
Stade de Reims - FC Nantes
Wednesday 16/12, 21:00
Paris Saint-Germain - FC Lorient
Olympique Lyonnais - Stade Brestois
Stade Rennais - Olympique de Marseille
AS Monaco - RC Lens
Girondins de Bordeaux - AS Saint-Étienne
Thanks a lot to Hippemann and NotMeladroit for all the clips and the tables ! For more news about the best league in the world (except for the other four) and to improve your french, come and subscribe to /Ligue1.
All feedbacks are welcome !
Previous matchdays :
Season 2020-2021
M1 - M2 - M3 - M4 - M5 - M6 - M7 - M8 - M9 - M10 - M11 - M12 - M13
Season 2019-2020
M12 - M13 - M14 - M15 - M16 - M17 - M18 - M19 - M20 - M21 - M22 - M23 - M24 - M25 - M26 - M27 - M28

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If you are in Monaco and you believe you have symptoms or have any questions please call Monaco’s coronavirus emergency number 98 98 48 50 or 06 78 63 85 68. Your emotional and mental wellbeing ... Coronavirus has been labelled a pandemic but a handful of countries have not yet reported any cases. COVID-19 has so far been reported in 188 countries and territories [Ebrahim Noroozi/AP] 14 Sep 2020 The total number of Covid-19 cases in Monaco amounted to 1,489, including 1,257 recoveries and 13 deaths ; The Platinum Security Exhibition, on February 2-3, 2021, presents solutions and new technologies; Exhibition “Unstable Artifices: Ceramics Stories” is now on in Villa Sauber; Gad Elmaleh is back in the Grimaldi Forum Monaco for 8 performances Nine people have now died with four of these deaths occurring this month. Since the pandemic began, the Principality has recorded 1240 positive cases. So, is the vaccination programme the light at the end of the tunnel? Thursday 31 December marks the date the very first Covid-19 vaccine was administered in Monaco. You may have been exposed to COVID-19 on your travels. You may feel well and not have any symptoms, but you can still spread the virus to others. You and your travel companions (including children) may pose a risk to your family, friends, and community after your travel. Get Tested and Stay Home After Travel In an emergency or if you have difficulty breathing, contact the emergency services directly on 112. To enable the emergency services and Princess Grace Hospital to focus on their primary missions, Monegasque nationals, residents and employees can contact the centre to discuss any questions they may have about Covid-19 by calling: 92 05 55 00. To interpret any data on confirmed cases we need to know how much testing for COVID-19 the country actually does. The Our World in Data COVID-19 Testing dataset Because testing is so very crucial to understanding the spread of the pandemic and responding appropriately we have focused our efforts on building a global dataset on COVID-19 testing. Covid-19 – Informations from the Prince’s Government On this website, you can find all of the information available about the measures taken in the Principality of Monaco to limit the spread of the virus and recommendations for your health and daily life. On Monday 28 December, the mayor of Nice, Christian Estrosi, requested an extraordinary meeting to discuss the worrying rise in Covid-19 cases in the Alpes-Maritimes region. One of the measures being considered is blocking commuters from traveling to Italy and Monaco. Weekly updated information on COVID-19 reported in the EU/EEA. ECDC switched to a weekly reporting schedule for the COVID-19 situation worldwide and in the EU/EEA and the UK on 17 December 2020.Hence, all daily updates have been discontinued from 14 December. ECDC will publish updates on the number of cases and deaths reported worldwide and aggregated by week every Thursday.

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Help me help him.

Iran's Nuclear Program: Return of the Shah, a DIY guide to Uranium Enrichment, and More Problems For Joe Biden

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2. Revolution and War

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Le Bilan - Ligue 1 Matchday 18 : Angers Management

Appetizers

Main Course

Matches

Table

Goals

Assists

COVID Championship

Dessert

Top 3 Goals of the Week

Upwards

L'Équipe Team of the Week

Quotes

Next matchday

Le Bilan Infinity War - Mid-Season Special

Ligue 1

Olympique Lyonnais by sugima

Lille OSC by PAT_The_Whale

Paris Saint-Germain by Rerel

Stade Rennais by ThePr1d3

Olympique de Marseille by LondonNoodles

Montpellier HSC by JeanneHusse

Angers SCO by EastOfEden_

OGC Nice by erjiin

Girondins de Bordeaux by NotMeladroit

FC Nantes by qqsharp

RC Strasbourg by Colyris

Ligue 2

Toulouse FC by THZHDY

AJ Auxerre by PrisonersofFate

En Avant Guingamp by sgdbdjos

National 1

Red Star FC by ziggurqt

Table

Next matchday

Le Bilan - Ligue 1 Matchday 17 : Everybody Hates Raymond

Appetizers

Main Course

Matches

Table

Goals

Assists

COVID Championship

Dessert

Top 3 Goals of the Week

Upwards

Downwards

In the gutter

L'Équipe Team of the Week

Quotes

Next matchday

Le Bilan - Ligue 1 Matchday 14 : Penalty Party

Appetizers

Main Course

Matches

Table

Goals

Assists

COVID Championship

Dessert

Top 3 Goals of the Week

Upwards

Downwards

L'Équipe Team of the Week

Quotes

Next matchday

does monaco have any covid cases video