Monday, April 16, 2012

The Sailer comes back - New France kit

Looks like the new "home" kit is taking from the old "away" kit -





Interesting...the stripes have made their way back into the French kit. Not bad, but not really much different from the all blue kit.

Tuesday, April 03, 2012

PSG - spin spin spin

Sigh, PSG has been reverting back to its usual form - flashes of excellence but when it comes to getting the job done leave much to be desired. In a recent interview with sporting director and former player Leonardo, there is already some spin worthy of Mitt Romney coming from the Parc de Princes.



"If you had told me second place I would have jumped in with both feet" to paraphrase what the Brazilian said. Ugh. Okay. I guess after dropping about 3 points to Nancy and looking ahead to heading away to Marseilles you start seeing the writing on the wall. Unacceptable!

PSG is tied with Montpellier for first place...how can you already be allowing yourself to speak of second place? Maybe the last game of the season, but there remains a number of games. The attitude of winning at a club starts at the top. Look at Wenger last season when he made his statement of still being in the hunt for 4 titles, even though the season was looking grim for Arsenal. Or has SAF ever said he would have been satisfied with second place in the Prem? If PSG wants to start earning all the money they have been afforded, they need to start speaking about winning and not about second place.

Would Leonardo have said this when he wore the yellow strip of Brazil? Doubtful.

Ligue 1 in jeopardy

Baring a huge miracle tonight, it appears that France's UEFA coefficient will sentence teams from Ligue 1 to drop in the Champions League. Meaning the third team in will have another round of games to qualify for the competition. Portugal looks likely to gain in the coefficient race. A large part of this is the fact French teams have done miserably in the Europa League, while teams from Portugal and the likes have done well (Porto holds the title currently). The two teams from France this season could not even get out of the group stages! Losing to the likes of Red Bull Salzbourg.

What is shocking to me, is that clubs from Portugal and even Ukraine have a better run in Europe than those from Ligue 1. The argument that France does not hold on to its best players is also moot since Portuguese teams are always being poached for both their players and coaches! France, similar to Portugal, has become a gate way league - Brazilians via Portugal and African players via France. So why are the French sides in such trouble when it comes to Europe? Being able to consistently place teams into the 1/4 finals of both the Champions League and Europa League should be a priority for Ligue 1, instead it appears to be an unintended consequence when it occurs.

French teams will continue to lose their players if they cannot offer European football. They have been warned.