“the struggle to maintain, a real competition and a lot of emotions”

The distressing PSG-OM on Sunday evening served the purpose of this column well. After such a purge between the Ligue 1 leader and his second, not to mention the suspense (Paris now has a fifteen-point lead in the championship), it will be less difficult to convince that the thrills are much stronger at the other end. of the rank.

The L1 had promised a show this season, without specifying which one. At the bottom of the table, the competition is tough, sometimes burlesque, with tennis set scores, decisions taken in panic and the presence of two monuments totaling sixteen national titles between them, AS Saint-Etienne and the Girondins from Bordeaux.

In this last extremity, the stake is not a European accessit or a greater share of TV rights, but nothing less than survival. Because Ligue 2 is hell or purgatory, according to the gospels, and you suffer a thousand punishments there – like spending your Saturday evening in Niort. The ascent is hypothetical, and there are risks of plummeting even lower.

Read also: Ligue 1: light lining, redemption and Bordeaux shipwreck

Pathetic epics

As the big teams ensure their supremacy almost everywhere in Europe, the chances of vibrating are dwindling for the supporters of the clubs forced to make up the numbers. Supporting a team that plays the maintenance offers at least the assurance of knowing a whole range of feelings, even if it is especially in the range of anxiety and depression.

How not to prefer these pathetic epics to the petty bourgeois routine of the middle of the table and its poor satisfactions (maintenance without danger)? The fight for the maintenance is a real competition and a lot of emotions, in this upside down championship disputed without a net.

Obviously, the story is only good if you get out of it. Though. FC Metz bequeathed to football, at the same time as its 2006 relegation, the formidable documentary by Julien Zenier, Free fall. Chronicle of a sporting failure. This immersive film was itself cursed since the club refused its broadcast (officially for rights issues), assuring it a destiny of bootleg legendary.

Twelve years later, the documentary series Sunderland ‘Til I Die confirmed that shipwrecks are a formidable sight, especially seen from the inside. Lose does a lot for the beauty of football, while contributing to its tragicomic character.

It is necessary, however, to believe in salvation and in notions such as the “psychological shock” of the change of coach. Statistical studies have never established the benefit, or at least have produced contradictory results. Pascal Dupraz, called in December to the bedside of the Greens, had ensured the improbable maintenance of Toulouse FC in 2016, leaving to posterity and management seminars a galvanizing speech on the last day.

You have 38.12% of this article left to read. The following is for subscribers only.


source site-28