MY LIGUE 1 STORY – BETWEEN PASSION AND DECEPTION by Emmanuel Lainé (@triboKing)

(Tim’s Note: I have been friends with Manu on Twitter for a short while and found his insight into Ligue Un thoughtful and passionate. So, in the tradition of this blog I invited him to write for us every once in a while, to give us his unique perspective on French football, and he accepted. This is his first post and I hope you find it as interesting as I do.)

When Tim asked me if I was interested to write a short letter for his blog, a couple of thoughts came to my mind:

1. The excitement that someone I respect is suggesting that my opinion would be worth something
2. An incredible level of stress. I have seen and read articles by so many talented writers, how could I even come close to them?

And now here I am, on this Friday morning, staring at my laptop, searching profusely for inspiration. Let’s do it and see what happens. Whatever occurs in your life, try at the very least to fuel it with passion, enjoyment and the desire to test yourself. If only one of you guys found some of my stories interesting, then I would have succeeded.

Let me start by sending my most precious thanks to Arsenal. A club that I have cherished for more than 20 years now. I moved from France to the UK in 1999 and Arsenal was brought to my attention by Mr Wenger, since then I have not looked back. I am a Gunner. But today I am not thanking Arsenal for the memories, I am not thanking Arsenal for the trophies, I am not thanking Arsenal for allowing me to enjoy this French part of me to appreciate and love dearly a club on the other side of the channel. I am thanking Arsenal for giving back to me one of my most precious loves: my beloved Ligue 1. 

My Ligue 1 is a story of a love and hate relationship and I thought this season would be the season of unconditional love, a love that brings excitement and regained passion for “Le Beau Jeu” or the beautiful game as you call it over here. So why mention Arsenal in all of this? The honest truth is that the difficulties I am seeing right now with the club have hurt me emotionally far deeper than I ever thought. I needed something new, and my eyes turned back to France. I needed a different level of interaction with football, what I cannot get from Arsenal, I would try my hardest to get from Ligue 1. I didn’t know that this renewed passion for the French League would also re-open some of the wounds that I have experienced whilst I was learning to appreciate and enjoy football. The most recent event between Nice and Marseille has woken up some of these feelings that I have tried so hard to silence over the years. My Ligue 1 is a story of passion and deception which has many chapters and today I will focus on chapter one: “The early years – Girondins de Bordeaux”

For as long as I can remember, I have had a unique passion for the French league. It actually hurts me to the core when it is referred to as the “farmers’ league”. I can understand why it came to this. At the end of the day, the lack of performance on the European scene associated with the lack of investment in the league, has contributed to that view. I understand it but it still hurts. How dare you describe this once glorious league in such a demeaning fashion. La Ligue 1, was once one of the most powerful leagues in Europe, or at least through the eyes of the kid I once was, it really was. All of my earliest football memories are linked to Bordeaux, PSG, Marseille, Nantes, Auxerre, Lyon… For every era, I can speak at length about the reason why this league should be appreciated and today I will start with Bordeaux.

I was born in the mid 70’s, so I missed the Saint Etienne years. To me Saint Etienne is nothing more than some fuzzy videos shown once in a while on Téléfoot (A tv programme in France similar to Match of the Day, but with interviews and short stories about the clubs). My first ever football memories were surrounded by the National Team and the world cup in 1982. At that time in the early 80’s, the biggest names in French Football were Platini, Giresse, Tigana, Trésor, Bellone, and Rocheteau. 

At the same time, one team in France started to make a name for itself. I could recognise some of the players and straight away my interest was sparked (my parents not being into football, I did not have a frame of reference, so being a football fan to me was open season and I had all the choice in the world!). I started to follow football at the same time that the golden age of “Les Girondins de Bordeaux” became a thing. It felt so appropriate, I could not tell otherwise, but I was hooked. Seriously, what a team that was. This team and the iconic Claude Bez (just google him, the human walrus) was indestructible, invincible, at least that was what I thought. 

Bez became the President of “Les Girondins” in 1978 and early on in his career, it was clear that this man developed an innate need to mirror and reproduce what St. Etienne achieved for so many years. It was clear that this new president was destined to take Bordeaux all the way to the national championship, even becoming a European champion maybe? 

Bez as a man was relentless, excessive, uncompromising and so deeply French (the photo of him wearing a beret surrounded by soviet chapkas in Dniepr, 1985 is memorable). For its president, Bordeaux had to become more professional in order to succeed but more than anything Bordeaux needed to win. This extreme desire to achieve what Bordeaux had not done for years transpired quickly on the team. By the early 80’s Bordeaux became something that nowadays we would compare as Chelsea under Mourinho. Ultra-defensive, strong and unforgiving (Bez was famous to reward a clean sheet, even if it ended up as a 0-0). 

This defensive unit coached by Aimé Jacquet and captained by Alain Giresse was balanced by a very technical and gifted midfield unit providing support to Bernard Lacombe. In the 80’s Bordeaux was the team to watch, not necessarily the most exciting, but the football made sense, they were all over the media and they were winning.  I knew very little at the time of Bez as a president and it took me some time to understand the character. Apologies for the poor analogy but for me he was someone who would not have looked out of place in one of the Godfather movies by Francis Ford Coppola. He had this hunger to win, no matter the cost, and found in the Mayor of Bordeaux (Chaban-Delmas) a precious ally, often influencing the town to invest heavily in the club or at most, time to pay off some of the end of season debts that the club had on its books. 

Being the best was not easy or cheap and the club wanted the best players (they looked at bringing in Platini for example), they had the money, they had the pull. But what made Bez’s style so uniquely engaging is that he developed some sort of patriarchal figure at the club. For Bez, the club was bigger than just a football relationship, you did not only sign for the club as a player, but you committed yourself as a man (for example the club was well known to agree the terms of a contract with a player and the owner would sign it off with a handshake, nothing more. When the deal is agreed, it is agreed). In other words, the same type of commitment that you only give to your family or a mafioso. It is about trust first and foremost. You wear the badge, you wear the team blazers, you follow the rules, you are part of the family. If you even dare betray the trust that the club has put in you, then you are out. No discussions, no regrets. 

Uncompromising? I told you so. But all of that brought immense success to the club, 30 or so years later Bordeaux once again became champion and it did not stop there. Double French Champion (84 and 85), first European semi-final in 1985 lost mainly in Turin but Bordeaux won the second leg at home. The methods were at times questionable but it worked. Bez became one of the most influential presidents in French football paving the way for the likes of Tapie, Aulas, and further away from football Boudjellal in Rugby. But what Bordeaux achieved at the time changed the league forever:

• Bordeaux was the first club to invest and develop a world-class training centre at the Chateau de Bel-Air in Le Haillan (it also looks incredible, reminiscent of some of the best Bordeaux vineyards Chateaux). This centre was at the time one of the best in Europe and it is still referenced all around France, even now. 
• Possibly and of greater importance, the impact that Bordeaux had financially on the French league. Pioneering discussions on dropping the salary cap for the clubs, as far as pressing for the fans to be able to bet on the football games. However, more importantly than anything else, Bordeaux was the first team to ask for TV rights on games played in their stadium (Before the game against Bilbao in 1984, Bez did not allow for cameras to penetrate the perimeter of the stadium). For Bez, the money generated by the adverts on TV had to benefit the clubs too. The media fought and bowed; however, it broke the link between the club and the media, something that Bez would pay for many years later. Bordeaux was a trailblazer, the first club to describe its football as a product, if you wanted the product then you had to pay for it (a new channel called Canal+ used this to its advantage). 

Bordeaux had a global impact on what the league is today and its president was at the centre of it all. 

So yes, I grew up falling in love with this club, but like a lot of love stories, when it ends, the disappointment is beyond anything that you could imagine. 

I loved Bordeaux for what it represented, I loved Bordeaux for the football it played, I loved Bordeaux for its success. When I played football as a kid and when all my friends were fighting for the number 10 (Platini) or the number 8 (Giresse), for me it was all about the number 14. This was the number Jean Tigana wore for France, it is also the number Thierry Henry (one of my idols) wore at Arsenal. I guess I was destined to be a Gunner from a young age. 

For me Tigana was Bordeaux and he had all the qualities that I liked in a football player. I have always wanted to play in midfield, and Tigana was the model of what I wished I’d become. A modern number 6, tireless on the pitch, able to protect the backline and to spur the attack into action due to his extreme physicality. Tigana was gliding on the pitch, his running mechanic was mesmerising. Beyond the technical abilities was a real professional football player, but that was his game which sparkled in my eyes. Next to Platini, Giresse and Fernandez he formed “le carré magique” for the French national team. Anyway, I digress.

When you are young and somehow naïve, you just never thought that this golden era would end, and inevitably, it did… (mind you I never thought that Arsenal would be in the position it’s in right now, so I guess I still carry this naivety in me).

At the time when Bernard Tapie became the president of the Olympique de Marseille, Claude Bez was already famous for his methods that some would describe as unorthodox. But the arrival of this young charismatic businessman was for Bordeaux and its president, the straw that broke the camel’s back. 

Bez despised everything that Tapie stood for, often described as his antithesis: the play-boy vs. the walrus, the liar vs the honest man, the man loved by the media vs the man the press was fighting. The list goes on but in my eyes these two characters were actually far closer to each other than the media wanted to portray them. They were both winners, winners at all costs, capable of distorting the truth and the authorities in order to get what they wanted to achieve. Their methods, or at least the way they portrayed them were opposite, but if you dig deeper, you may actually find that some of the ways of doing business were similar: a game of poker (Tapie and Deferre vs. Bez and Chaban Delmas). 

By the late 80’s Bordeaux was at war with Marseille, Bez often describing Tapie as a cancer on French football, “un charognard” (a vulture). Tapie was an adept manipulator, a gifted orator who often played with Bez – who suffered from stuttering – during the French League committee meetings. Bez just could not cope with Tapie who was seen as a bulldozer: “La guerre des chefs” as we often described it in France. 

The final strike for Bez, the ultimate insult occurred when Giresse deserted Bordeaux and joined the enemy Marseille. We often talk about the classico Marseille-PSG, but trust me this is nothing compared to what the rivalry between Bordeaux and Marseille was. Tapie was a master manipulator, Bez was inflammatory.  Marseille won the league in 1990, the same year that the grasp Bez had over Bordeaux started to fade. The lack of European football associated with the need to pay back some loans, led the Mairie to become more and more distant. The political game intensified and Bez found himself isolated. Fighting the journalists with the same vigour as the FISC (Tax Authority), Bez found himself stuck in a financial slump. Overpayment from the municipality to cover the refurbishment of the training centre and facilitating contracts for his friends being at the centre of the trial. 

Bez had no other option than to resign, leaving behind him debts and despair for the fans. Even now a large portion of the fanbase struggle to recognise Bez for what he did at the club. The wound is that deep. He refused to show a sign of weakness and this was at the centre of his demise. The club was subsequently relegated in 1991, and after just one year in the lower division, the team bounced  back to prominence with its own youth project, some of these players you might remember: Lizarazu, Dugarry and a young midfielder called Zidane. A few years later, the 13^th man – “le treizième homme” – passed away.

My Ligue 1 story started as a story of love and despair. Love for the game and what it represented as well as the impact it had on me as a young boy. I would not be able to talk about this league without Bordeaux and in a way without what its president has done for the club. Without Bordeaux and without the Ligue 1, I would never have been able to understand English football and what football means for the fans. The despair I have carried with me for many years is mainly linked to the fact that through this Bordeaux adventure, I realised for the first time that the game was also associated with forces which were darker than I ever imagined: wars between supporters, political games, deception and manipulation… I thought I would never be naive enough to believe that the only possible way to win is to win dirty and then Marseille became a thing….

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Emmanuel Lainé (aka Manu) is just a French guy living in the UK and who fell in love with Arsenal at the start of the Wenger years. Avid follower of the French League and for way too long he felt ashamed to admit that he followed PSG. He does not describe himself as a specialist, just someone who likes football and likes to share his passion for football with likeminded people. Let’s be kind to each other!