Why you have to give Ligue 1 a chance this upcoming season
New season kicks off on Friday 4th August. League Champions Monaco will host Toulouse.
Ok. Despite being on the Top 10 most viewed and popular football leagues in the world, let’s be honest football fans preferences lie elsewhere: Premier League, La Liga, Champions League, Major League Soccer, Mexican League, other sports like UFC, NBA, NFL, Boxing, etc. or other non-sports related things.
Let’s do a recap. Last 4–5 seasons has been all about Paris Saint Germain’s dominance with other 19 teams competing against them. With players like Ibrahimovic, Cavani, Silva, Verrati, it would have been a mayor failure if they didn’t win it, really! Now this past season all things were different with the departure of Blanc and Ibrahimovic and the arrival of Emery. Many people assume this is the major reason why PSG failed to win the League for the 6th consecutive time. I don’t think that at all. There were a number of reasons why PSG failed to achieve this objective (Favre transforming OGC Nice into a great team and Monaco doing a great job with their young stars). But that it’s not what we came here. So the real question is why i should give Ligue 1 a chance on this upcoming season?
The Fantastic 5?


Seeing what happened last season there are 3 clear favourites to fight for the Ligue 1 Title: League Champions Monaco, “always favourite” Paris Saint Germain and “surprising” OGC Nice. This 3 teams gave us one of the best Ligue 1’s showdowns in recent years last season. You had PSG always at the top with players like Cavani in his best form in years, January-signed Julian Draxler, the experience in Thiago Silva, Maxwell, Motta and Di Maria, youngsters having shades of brightness like Rabiot, Marquinhos and Areola, etc. Unexpectedly a team called OGC Nice that announced former Borussia Mönchengladbach manager Lucien Favre and signed experienced players like Dante and Balotelli surprised everybody when they began their campaign with an impressive 11-game undefeated streak before losing 1–0 to SM Caen and finally claiming the 3rd spot to play the UEFA Champions League playoffs for the next campaign. Lucien Favre give this team a new face and it was exciting to watch with players like Koziello, Belhanda, Pereira, Pléa and Cyprien. Monaco by the way started the campaign in a very irregular way before having an splendid 2nd part of the season where they were undefeated and with players like Kylian Mbappé and Radamel Falcao playing a big part in their championship quest and also in their magnificent Champions League run where they get through to the semifinal stage, eliminated at the hands of Juventus.
The title of this part though is the Fantastic 5, so who are the other 2 teams?
Olympique Marseille and Olympique Lyonnais. The classic ones. The teams that were fighting top-to-top before Nasser Al-Khelaïfi PSG’s Takeover. This teams can transform this League into a real competitive one if they go for it. I think that’s their ambition. And their signings talk for themselves. Luiz Gustavo and Germain are great adquisitions as they have been crucial in the teams they have played for and then you have the return of players like Mandanda who didn’t have a great time at Crystal Palace, Adil Rami, N’Jié and the permanent signing of youngster Florian Thauvin. All of them with the rest of the teammates managed by Rudi Garcia, a manager who did a great job at Roma. The same goes to Lyon with the signings of Mariano Diaz, former Real Madrid player who take the best of the few chances he got there. UEFA Europa League runners-up Traoré and Tete both young kids that have a great future. If they really dare maybe they can do it right?
Lille and Nantes- Can Bielsa and former Leicester manager Ranieri pull up a major surprise?
Now this got even more interesting.
Both teams have been around the mid-table obscurity this past seasons - Lille had Payet, Hazard, Gervinho, Cabaye and Rami all in the same team once and they were crowned Champions that year - Nantes has been more like a West Bromwich Albion team this past seasons, they’re there but no one even notice but somehow, some way they are still there. Now they have appointed Mr.Ranieri, “the miracle man”, “the world’s favorite grandpa”,”5000/1". Better know as the man who did the impossible and crowned Leicester City as Champions of English Premier League, overcoming the odds in a very-if not the most-difficult football league. Ranieri said recently “we must forget Leicester with work and humillty”. Now is the same scenario: A modest team in a very competitive league against football giants in all aspects. Can he do it again? We’ll see. Bielsa however has a little advantage here because he has already managed in this league with Olympique Marseille. He did a good job at his first-and only- season reaching the 4th place and qualifying to the Europa League. He will seek for revenge that’s for sure.
Can another team add up to this race?
You never expected to see Nice and Monaco reaching such highest expectations last season so why not? You have good teams like Toulouse that did great at the end of the season with the arrival of Andy Delort, former champions like Montpellier, Bordeaux, etc. and other teams around the corner.
Looks great, doesn’t it? I think this can be the most interesting Ligue 1 season in recent times. Let’s see if it can be that way.
