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Match Focus: Old Favourites Still Key for Bayern and Dortmund

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Match Focus: Old Favourites Still Key for Bayern and Dortmund That Borussia Dortmund came up short at the Allianz Arena in Der Klassiker against Bayern Munich was not the biggest surprise of the weekend. It was still to come late on Sunday, when Vladimir Darida’s penalty winner for Freiburg at Köln sealed a first win of the season for Christian Stre...

Match Focus: Marvellous Marseille Denied Again by Lyon

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Match Focus: Marvellous Marseille Denied Again by Lyon If an end had to come to Marseille’s scintillating winning run of eight matches, it was probably always destined to be at Stade de Gerland against Lyon, in the derby of the two Olympiques. Exactly the same had happened on their last such run of successes, when Bernard Lacombe’s side defe...

Team Focus: Profligate Saint Etienne Battle On

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Team Focus: Profligate Saint Etienne Battle On The history of Saint Etienne, which built their legend in France and beyond, is full of dramatic interventions and late twists. Saturday’s late winner at Lorient wasn’t quite equal to the drama of the European Cup comeback against Dynamo Kiev in 1976, but it was produced by an unlikely e...

Team Focus: France Flexibility the Key as Les Bleus Look to 2016

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Team Focus: France Flexibility the Key as Les Bleus Look to 2016 It is beginning to look like a model case study in perfect preparation. France is limbering up for Euro 2016, and things are looking good. If you thought getting set to host a tournament was all about an unseemly last-minute scramble of infrastructure tightening and agonising over selection, think a...

Player Focus: Gignac, Lacazette and Ben Yedder give Deschamps an Embarrassment of Riches

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Player Focus: Gignac, Lacazette and Ben Yedder give Deschamps an Embarrassment of Riches After striking Marseille’s late winner at Caen, André-Pierre Gignac exploded with joy. In the wake of the goal, he celebrated wildly with teammates before approaching Marcelo Bielsa on the touchline. “Un abrazo para El Loco,” (‘a hug for the crazy one’), he insis...

Team Focus: With or Without Zlatan, PSG Face a Mountain against Barcelona

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Team Focus: With or Without Zlatan, PSG Face a Mountain against Barcelona Ever since the draw was made in Monaco, Zlatan Ibrahimovic might conceivably have had this Tuesday marked in his diary in red pen. ‘8.45 pm. Prove Barcelona wrong, Parc des Princes.’ What he wouldn’t have been expecting is to have to silence a few dissenters closer to home.At first...

Match Focus: Lyon’s Growing Stamina Catches Out PSG

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Match Focus: Lyon’s Growing Stamina Catches Out PSG Three weeks, it turns out, is a long time in the life of Ligue 1. If somebody had told you at the start of the month that after Paris Saint-Germain’s meeting with Lyon, one team would be steeling themselves for a productive winter while the other would be questioning the very direction of thei...

Match Focus: Favre Changes Fire Gladbach’s Ambition

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Match Focus: Favre Changes Fire Gladbach’s Ambition There are moments, even at such an early stage of the season, that have a sense of the pivotal about them. Perhaps Borussia Mönchengladbach and Schalke both had epiphanies of sorts when they met at Borussia Park on Saturday evening. A fixture between two of the pretenders for Champions League p...

Team Focus: France Finding the Formula to Forget Ribéry

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Team Focus: France Finding the Formula to Forget Ribéry The dust is only just settling on the international retirement of Franck Ribéry, and it will continue to wag French tongues for a while yet. “I don’t understand him,” UEFA president Michel Platini told Bild am Sonntag in an interview published this weekend. “He’s...

Team Focus: Lille Still Not Pretty, but Hard to Budge

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Team Focus: Lille Still Not Pretty, but Hard to Budge It was, as L’Equipe later wrote with some understatement, “a strange day” at the Stade Louis II. With Monaco’s late withdrawal of Radamel Falcao from their squad – and his subsequent presence next to agent Jorge Mendes and Monaco vice-president Vadim Vasilyev in the dir...