With a few days free in the diary, in the fortnight leading up to Christmas, what else was there to do on a Sunday morning but jump on a coach to France and take in a Ligue 1 match?
I’d identified Lille as a ground that I wanted to visit a while back. So, when the fixture list threw up a Sunday evening match between LOSC Lille and Qatar giants, PSG 😉, how could I resist?
Sunday, 10th December, 2023
Rather than travel just as a fan next week, I’ve decided to put my france media credentials to work and get accredited. Last week, I’d been to Brighton for the Europa League match with Marseille, so I had the bug again.
My application is approved on Thursday, which is handy because I’ve already booked the coach tickets for Sunday! I didn’t want to miss out on a good price, and £29.99 from London to Lille was not to be sniffed at.
Sunday, 17th December, 5.20am
As always, I do my research on the first leg of the journey (en route, as the french say). It’s an early start, bloody early to be fair, and I’m grateful for a lift from my lovely wife to the coach station in Fareham.
Lille, I learn, is a merger of two teams, Olympique Lillois and SC Fives in 1944. Both clubs were founding members of the French Division 1 and Olympique Lillois was the league’s inaugural champions in 1932-1933 when the league was called the National. Following a scandal which saw Antibes disqualified for ‘suspicion of bribery’, Olympique Lillois defeated Cannes 4-3 to take the title. The following year, the league was renamed Division 1 and FC Sète completed the league and cup double.
During World War II, the Vichy regime outlawed professionalism in sport, but football in France continued under an amateur code.
When professional football returned in 1945, following the liberation of France by the allies, two of the founder members Olympique Lillois and SC Fives merged to create a new club and Lille were formed, promptly winning the title in 1945-1946.
I daydream a while on the coach. It’s 1981, and I’m on the set of the wartime football film, Escape to Victory.
Ardiles is showing off his skills in front of the rolling camera. The ball is behind him when he flicks it up effortlessly over his own head and also over the head of the befuddled, onrushing opponent. Ardiles continues his run forward, and the heavy leather ball falls perfectly into his stride on the dusty gravel pitch.
Meanwhile, Stallone is between the posts parrying, saving, and diving on the dust. He’s doing everything that he can to stop each shot. He’s gotta be on the team.
Michael Caine shouts something at Pele for not passing the ball, but it sounds like he’s shouting, “You’re only supposed to blow the bloody doors off” (from the Italian Job) and it’s at this point that I realise I’ve dozed off. “Cut!” I yell in my sleep. Thankfully, I’ve not shouted this out loud and there’s no harm done. I look out of the window and see the brick spire of the cathedral in Guildford.
Arriving ahead of schedule at London Victoria, I grab a coffee – to go – and find my Flixbus coach connection waiting at platform 13.
Once on board, I settle in. The coach driver tells us that the toilet is broken. A sign on it says so. ‘Toilet out of order, it don’t werk!’ He elaborates, “while we are moving, you can do number 1. Only pee-pee.” There are grumbles amid the sniggers.
An hour or so later, the double-decker, lime green, Flixbus coach fits snugly onto le shuttle, and I admire the skill of the driver. I feel like I’m one of the sour cream and onion crisps enclosed tightly inside my tube of travel Pringles!
Lille is not very far from the shuttle terminus on the French side. After ten minutes, I see a road sign, which gives the distance as 82km to Lille. The A15 snakes through North Eastern France.
This is the Western Front. This is Ypres, the scene of 250,000 allied nightmares. The highway is flanked on either side by wet and muddy fields. ‘Ypres 2000m, another sign says,’ and it gets me thinking about my school history lessons and Blackadder Four.
In Lille, it’s just a short hop on the Metro, and I’m outside the stadium by 3.30pm. Only five hours and fifteen minutes early.
Lille has played its home matches since 2012 here at the Stade Pierre-Mauroy, which is also known as the Decathlon Arena (sponsors name). The 50,186-capacity stadium is the fourth-largest football stadium in France and has a retractable roof. It is named after the former prime minister of France.
Pierre Mauroy was a socialist, prime minister between 1981 to 1984 under President François Mitterrand. Mauroy also served as Mayor of Lille from 1973 to 2001. At the time of his death Mauroy was the emeritus mayor of the city of Lille. He died from complications of lung cancer on 7 June 2013 at the age of 84.
I’m here way too early to collect my media pass, so I take a stroll around the perimeter and find a bar to stand inside and have a pint. I’m a couple of pints in when I realise the time and make my way around the stadium to collect my pass.
Once inside, I take the lift up to the press area and set myself up on the halfway line. Then, I head back inside for some dinner. Some dauphinoise potatoes that taste like a carbonara, and some salad.
The experience of a match in France seems to be all about the ultras. Things have got a bit out of hand lately, and away fans have been banned at many grounds in ligue 1. Nevertheless, Paris St Germain (PSG) have brought about 1000 away fans, and they’re parked up in the top corner of the ground at the other end of the stadium from the ‘Dogues Virage Est’ where the Lille ultras are packed in.
Before kick-off, the stand to my left is hidden below an enormous flag depicting the skeleton head of a mastiff (dog) smoking a spliff! The end of it is lit up by a flare for effect.
If you can’t get excited about seeing arguably the best player in the world in the flesh, then you can’t really call yourself a football fan, can you? Kylian Mbappe is that player. The television doesn’t really do him justice.
Sunday, 17th December, Pierre Mouroy Stadium,
LOSC Lille 1, Paris Saint-Germain 1
It’s only six minutes into the game and Mbappe is terrorising the Lille defence with a mix of skill, pace, power, and raw determination. He is an irresistible force, although this would turn out to be one of his quieter games.
The 4-2-3-1 formation of the home side looks a little stretched in the first half. Kangin Lee looks to have acres of space in the midfield to operate alongside Zaire-Emery, and between them and Vitinha, they create plenty.
Lille are finding it difficult to get out of their own half, and on 10 minutes, Dembele finds an ocean of space out on the right side of the pitch. Ultimately though, his cross is aimless. Even Mbappe can’t turn that kind of service into anything meaningful. The same happens again two minutes later, and I smile knowingly to myself. I’m not a huge fan of Dembele.
A couple of minutes later and PSG are almost made to pay for their wastefulness in attack. Edon Zhegrova has two chances to open the scoring in quick succession. Cutting in from the right-hand side, the 24-year-old Kosovan fires first into the side netting and then wide of the far post.
Adilson Gomes livens up the crowd in the 17th minute when he nutmegs a PSG midfielder before being hauled down. He does the same in the second half before attempting a direct pass that doesn’t quite find its target.
Lille’s build up play is careless and Lee intercepts a wayward pass before marauding forward down the middle and feeding Dembele out on the right. However, Dembele’s right footed shot is pulled past Chevalier’s right-hand post, much to the relief of the home crowd.
This is turning into a rather scrappy affair and it’s no surprise that Pereira in the heart of the PSG defence is beginning to control the tempo of the game. PSG’s midfield are beginning to dominate now. Through the middle, they are overrunning Bentaleb and Andre, Lille’s double pivot.
Mbappe is denied a shooting opportunity on 30 minutes when he inadvertently stands on the ball after PSG break quickly from a Lille corner.
Vitinha draws a fine save out of Chevalier in the Lille goal as PSG turn up the heat approaching half-time, forcing a succession of corners.
The second half is scrappier than the first. Lille have tightened up the middle, and PSG are losing their shape.
It’s not a great surprise when the deadline is broken by a penalty. I couldn’t see either team scoring up until then. Mbappe places the ball on the spot and dispatches his shot wide and high to Cheavalier’s right and past his despairing dive.
PSG are content with this. They’ll just defend now and see this game out. The Lille fans try to get the team going. Flares and smoke create a wall of red amid their chanting.
Zhegrova is not having much luck on the right side of Lille’s attack. He’s been making the wrong choices at times and wasting good positions.
Time is just about to run out for Lille. We’ve played the 90, + 4 minutes of the 5 allocated minutes of additional time. Lille’s substitute Jonathon David makes an absolute meal of a chance before the ball somehow finds itself at his feet again, and he smashes it home.
Half the press box are on their feet, showing their true colours. The stadium rises as one, and I’m half expecting the World Cup to be presented on the field as everyone goes wild!
The restart is accompanied by the final whistle. I take a couple more photos and head down for the post-match press conference with each of the teams’ coaches.
Luckily, there’s a translator to translate the questions from the floor…from French into Spanish…and the coaches responses back into French again. I make a mental note to take a crash course in French and then take a couple of snaps: headshots of each coach for the blog.
The coach journey home is hard work. I’m tired, and passport control at Calais is unnecessarily slow. We have to get off the coach twice before enduring an hour-long wait to board the shuttle.
I’ve a couple of hours at Victoria, so I find somewhere to sit, eat, and edit this post.
I’ve not slept much on the way home, so I’ll try and get my head down now. Before I do, though, a couple of final paragraphs.
I’m not sure that I found football’s heart and soul on this trip. The ultras scene just seems a little contrived for my liking and the football lacked some of the intensity that you associate with the English leagues.
As for Lille itself, I didn’t really get a chance to look around the city. I’ll make the trip again soon, I’m sure. It’s a relatively short and uncomplicated journey, and the stadium is quite spectacular.
My heart feels pity for the soldiers on both sides of the Western front. An absent romantic border. A bloody and muddy field. And Christmas, two weeks away. I order my coffee. Make it a milky one Baldrick!