To a lot of people, France is a large country where lazy people with loose ideas on hygiene spend their time drinking fine wines and whining about one thing or another. Oh and beheading kings and queens alike, when they are in the mood. That’s for the clich?s, anyway. On the other hand, if you believe that France is a country of paradoxes, then you probably won’t be surprised to learn that although the French Ligue 1 became last season one of Europe’s most expensive leagues thanks to Canal+ massive investment. 600 millions euros a year (approx. 400 millions pounds) in TV rights for a league that hardly produces 1.97 goal a game might seem like a lot of money, particularly when you consider that the G14 are getting closer and closer to form a breakaway super European league. But how did France came from boasting one of Europe’s most spectacular outfit in the early 90s Olympique de Marseille to a league where most clubs would put Herrera’s Inter to shame?

World Cup 1998 and The Beginning Of The End

Oddly enough, the catalyst for France’s downfall might have been their 1998 World Cup win. Despite Marseille’s historic win against AC Milan in the first ever Champions League final, French clubs had never enjoyed much success on the continental scene. Their inability to compete with bigger and richer competitors soon led most chairmen in France believing that playing a decent and entertaining game, in the great tradition of the national team led by such artists as Platini, Giresse, Tigana and Rocheteau, was the best they could have hoped for.

And there came a man, Aim? Jacquet, who not only builds a new team on the ashes of the one that lost at home to Bulgaria and failed to qualify for the 1994 World Cup. We’re talking about a man who was considered a pariah in France for his negative tactics, a man who was appointed because he was the only applicant for the job after Houllier’s failure. Unsurprisingly, Jacquet’s first decision was to get rid of Cantona and Ginola, two of France’s most outstanding talents at the time.

Aime Jacquet’s Defensive Tactics

Aime Jacquet

His second decision was to use an extremely dull 4-3-2-1 formation, a formation that will win him the World Cup. Of course, his team struggled to beat the likes of Paraguay but, in the end, there wasn’t a team that found an effective answer to Jacquet’s tactics. The main innovation was the idea to play three (very) defensive midfielders behind a playmaker, a winger and a lone striker. Suddenly, a lot of people in French football discovered that you could be boring and successful (which, by the way, shows that they were a bit slow because Italian clubs had been dominating Europe for years with their negative approach to the game).

All of a sudden, a whole new generation of French managers came to the front. And while “old school” managers like Ars?ne Wenger had to move abroad to find a job, people like Alain Perrin (Troyes, Marseille, Portsmouth), Elie Baup (Bordeaux, St Etienne), Vahid Halilhodzic (Lille, Rennes, PSG), Jacques Santini (Lyon) or Joel Muller (Metz, Lens), to name but a few, strove. They have managed to set a trend and, despite their indifferent results in Europe, the fact that Lyon manager, Paul Le Guen, has won three league titles in a row is hardly going to change that.

The Role Of The French Chairman

Another explanation lies with their chairmen themselves. Despite France being one of the first countries in the world to recognise a managers’ union, club owners have grown more trigger-happy than ever before. The 20 clubs from France’s elite used 30 different managers between them last season and with even more money at stake this year with Canal+’s investment, there’s little chance to see that number drop significantly.

Under such circumstances, most Ligue 1 bosses prefer to play it safe. Even then, they’re having a hard time surviving the ups and downs of their career as their life-spans have recently dropped below the 38-game mark, less than a full season. Basically, that means that even when a new man comes in, he isn’t given enough time to build his own team and bring his own players in. It also means that chairmen tend to go for the same type of managers as someone with a totally different approach might have a hard time making the most of a squad comprised mostly of defenders and defensive midfielders.

With less and less time to prove themselves, most managers’ first priority is to make sure they won’t lose the next game. A losing streak is often more than they can afford and a sound 0-0 will often buy them more time than an entertaining 4-3 defeat. At the moment, it’s highly unlikely that any French club would appoint the next Johan Cruyff as their new manager.

Youth Academies and The Future of French Football

The third factor responsible for this situation is actually what French football authorities are the most proud of: their youth academies. For dozens of years, there was only one model in France when it came to teaching youngsters, the Nantes football academy. Despite their limited success, Nantes has always been the only French club to stick to an attractive attacking style of play. This “Nantes way” is based on fast-paced, one-touch attacking football and is very demanding in terms of both individual technique and understanding between players.

Guy Roux

However, this model has been challenged since the emergence of Guy Roux’s Auxerre. Roux likes his players to be strong and full of pace. With Auxerre’s rise to the top of the French game, more and more clubs have raised their demands in terms of physical prowess, often at the detriment of technical skill. Granted, this is a trend at European level and French coaches are not the sole culprits in this situation but the fact remains that Ligue 1 club are aces when it comes to producing players you wouldn’t like to meet in a dark alley.

Flair has been replaced with pace and strength and, in that respect, Eric Cantona’s succession is quite telling. If you forget the 4-year episode between 94 and 98, France’s most prolific strikers have been Thierry Henry and Nicolas Anelka. Regardless of his questionable personality, the former Real Madrid striker has gradually become a benchmark when it comes to French forwards. Lately, he’s been replaced with Djibril Ciss?, a slightly better version (the Liverpool man is more aware of the offside rule and has a more powerful shot) with the same characteristics: pace, pace and even more pace.

With the lack of creative players, most managers now rely on hoofing the ball forward, hoping for a mistake from an opposition defender. In this context, players like Ciss? and Anelka flourish. The same goes for defenders: you won’t see another Laurent Blanc for years as his kind have been replaced with night-club bouncers such as Jean-Alain Boumsong. More and more players are rejected from youth academies because they are “too small to make it”, “too lightweight” or “not tall enough”. And since most of France’s backroom staff has been selected by Jacquet himself, things are, again, unlikely to change in the near future.

The Road Ahead

Michel Hidalgo

Absurd as it may sound, the French federation has commissioned former manager Michel Hidalgo to find an answer to their current predicament. Famous for managing France in the 80s and reaching two World Cup semi-finals, he faces a daunting prospect. The reasons behind the lack of goal are clearly endemic. On the other hand, Jean-Pierre Escalettes’ (chairman of the FFF) motivations are purely incidental: to put it bluntly, he’s worried that Canal+ might become reluctant in the not too distant future to pay a fortune for second-rate games.

So far, all Hidalgo has managed to come up with is a bonus point for the first team to score. Needless to say that, just like the golden goal, it won’t have much effect on the game. Clueless as he is at the moment, it won’t be long before he proposes to give a point for a defeat and none for a draw. Or anything else that sounds absurd enough.

Unfortunately, this time around, it will take a lot more than cosmetic measures to turn things around. Come to think of it, there are only two ways to sort out this mess: either a football genius will take over at a lower club and break Lyon’s stranglehold on the title or the federation needs a complete revamp of its backroom staff.

And something tells me the former has more chance of happening than the latter?

This entry was posted on Tuesday, October 4th, 2005 at 9:57 pm and is filed under General Football Articles. You can subscribe via RSS 2.0 feed to this post's comments. Both comments and pings are currently closed.