A look at our week of derby-related wisdom and fun – and a marvellous 93rd minute climax to the Spain-France …
For those who like my occasional updates from the French league, the big news of the weekend was that Paris Saint-Germain and Marseille chose in different ways to reinforce the idea that it is PSG and the rest in Ligue 1.
Top news from France: our old favourite Steed Malbranque, having walked out on Saint-Etienne soon after joining them from Sunderland last summer, has landed on his feet.
Late news: big debate brewing in France on whether certain players – the suspects, by and large and overlooking the squad’s surly return to French soil, are identified below – should receive their €100,000-a-man bonuses for reaching the last eight …
The first thing to say is that Euro 2012 seems to have whittled down the competing nations to the four that logically merit a presence in the semi-finals.
Just a few days after I warmly recalled a memorable lunch with the veteran French football commentator Thierry Roland, I awoke today to news that he had died during the night at the age of 74.
It has now become officially fashionable – that is to say permitted by the BigClubCentric sportswriters – to regard defence as a proper part of playing football.
The French media build-up to tomorrow’s game, England v France, has dwelt on England’s great capacity to disappoint in high competition, the injuries and disruptions to Roy Hodgson’s squad and the confidence derived from a long unbeaten run and some striking French form in the last few friendlies.
Like many others who watch French football, I have a soft spot for Auxerre. Not just because I love Burgundy, but because the football team – they were managed for 36 years by the same man, Guy Roux – seemed for so long a stable fixture of the French game.
Tonight I found it in my heart to loathe them, before remembering that even if a team has a big toerag element within its support – fill in the missing letters in M***w**l or L***s or C**d*f* – it is necessarily a toerag club.
With their barrages of tennis balls and toilet paper, a significant minority of Auxerre fans to be known from now on as la racaille or les voyous twice stopped the game against Montpellier. This could have swayed the outcome of the championship since all matches kicked off the at the same time. The effect on Montpellier players’ nerves must have been unbearable.
Most attention in French football, providing welcome distraction from the elections, focuses today on the Premier-style movement at the top, where moneybags Paris Saint-Germain are again threatening to tear up the fairytale script that would have Montpellier as champions. And once-mighty Marseille’s first Ligue 1 win in centuries, Loic Remy grabbing the only goal at home to far-from-mighty Nancy.
I prefer to look forward to tonight’s game and hope for a Dijon victory over Auxerre.
STOP PRESS. Beaten two nil …
Do not worry. Salut! Sunderland is not about to test your digestive systems with another reference to andouillettes, re-encountered on …
Image: addick-tedKevin
Image: Gene Hunt