Ligue 2 is regaining its rights. The season officially starts on Friday, August 16. The opportunity to take stock of the forces present and the main opponents of Clermont Foot.
The Stade Malherbe in Caen, of which Kylian Mbappé became the majority shareholder this summer, will be the curiosity of the L2 season, which starts on Friday, against the background of a strike by supporters in war against the scheduling of matches on weekdays instead of at weekends.
Caennais begins on Saturday at home against Paris FC (14:30), the fifth of last season, but we will have to wait until the end of the transfer window to get a more precise idea of the ambitions of the Norman club.
The two main recruits at the moment are former international Yann M’Vila (22 caps for France), who returns to France at 34 from West Bromwich Albion, and Lorenzo Rajot, a midfielder who came from Rodez. The Stade Malherbe project with Mbappé, who now owns 80% of the club’s shares, is a long-term project. But there is still no telling whether the Normans will be among the favorites this season.
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Logically, the most anticipated teams will be Lorient and Metz, who are relegated from Ligue 1. The two teams play on Monday at 20:45. The Merlus travel to Martigues, while the Lorraines welcome Bastia.
These two will be aiming for at least the Top 5, which offers the possibility of promotion, either directly for the top two, or through the playoffs, which allows a team to face the 16th in L1 in the playoffs up/down.
For Metz, as for Caen, the situation will be clearer at the end of the transfer window. The Croix de Lorraine club had to part with its key players during the summer (Mikautadze, Camara, Jean Jacques, N’Doram) and the supporters are waiting impatiently to know who will come to compensate for these departures.
“Strike” animations
Lorient, for its part, is moving forward with more conviction. President Loïc Ferry announced at the end of last season that he intended to “return with a solid organization and an ambitious project to exist well in Ligue 2 and move up very quickly”.
To do this, he recruited Corsican coach Olivier Pantaloni, an experienced technician who has two promotions to L1 under his belt, with Ajaccio in 2011 and then again in 2022. Pantaloni brought in his luggage goalkeeper Benjamin Leroy, who he had made his starter at . Ajaccio for four seasons. In particular, Leroy was named the best goalkeeper in L2 in 2022. The other reinforcement announced in Lorient is Bandiougou Fadiga, a midfielder trained at Paris SG, from Olympiakos.
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The first days of the championship promise to be tense. LFP’s decision after agreement with the television company BeIN Sportsplaying a majority of the games on Friday and Monday does not go down well with the supporters. The fan associations have announced a “strike” of all their events in the stands, as well as actions aimed at disrupting the broadcast of the matches until negotiations are successful with the League and the TV channel.
The league has also decided not to introduce VAR in L2 this season, to save money after the reduction of TV rights.
L2 will have to learn to live this season without one of its flagship clubs, the Girondins de Bordeaux, a historical monument of French football, administratively relegated to Nationale 2 (fourth division) after being placed in receivership. The club, featuring Alain Giresse, Jean Tigana, Zinédine Zidane and Yoann Gourcuff, finished 12th last season in Ligue 2, but its financial difficulties doomed it to disappear – temporarily? – the landscape of French professional football.
Editorial with AFP
