Le Mans: Le Preview (More or Less)
By: Martha | September 19th, 2008
You like, ladies? You should see me with my armband.
Gardiens: Letizi, Ospina
Défenseurs: Cid, Diakité, Gace, Hognon, Jeunechamp, Kanté
Milieux: Coulibaly, Echouafni, Faé, Hellebuyck
Attaquants: Bamogo, Ben Saada, Modeste, Mouloungui, Ozokwo, Rémy
Absents: Apam, Traoré (blessés), Rool (suspendu), Asamoah, Barul, Moreau, Moussilou (choix de l’entraîneur)
Ok, I have a question. Cyril #1 gets a one-game suspension for the red card against Lyon, that I get. But why are Faé and Bamogo, both of whom have suspensions to serve due to accumulated yellows, available? Even more befuddling (to me, anyway), the Nice site says they’re serving the suspensions during the Cup match against Boulogne next week. What? How? And if you can just serve suspensions whenever the hell you want, why is Rool missing tomorrow, rather than Boulogne?
Right. Moving on. With Apam and Cyril #1 both out, the defense will presumably look like it did during the Olympics, with Hognon and Cyril #2 taking their places. (Given the team’s results during those matches, is much less scary than playing without two defensive starters would otherwise seem.) In the midfield, it’s disappointing not to have gotten Traoré back yet; even though Mouloungui will probably take his place again, I’m going to keep putting Ben Saada in my lineup in the hope that Antonetti happens by before the match. So, with those absences, this is what we’ve got, probably:
Letizi
Diakité-Hognon-Kanté-Jeunechamp
Echouafni
Fae-Hellebuyck
Bamogo-Ben Saada
Remy
Nice will be happy to be home after last weekend’s heartbreak, and are yet to drop a point at the Fortress Ray this season. (Don’t talk to me about it only being two matches, dammit, facts are facts!) But Le Mans are money on the road, where they’ve picked up two of their three wins and have scored seven goals in two matches, so if Nice allow themselves to spent a minute or two admiring their surroundings and thinking about home cooking, they could well end up with a mountain to climb. Not, of course, that I expect such a thing to happen.
Given the events of last weekend and the indignation of Nice fans, support should be noisy and numerous tomorrow and, though they’ve of course officially gotten over Lyon, it’s safe to assume the team will be fired up to come out and prove their worth. (Hopefully the eagerness will result in attractive, attacking football, and not ill-timed tackles and buckets of cards.)
Hey, if the MP who raised the Lyon-Nice match in the general assembly last week thinks it’ll be a Nice win, who are we to argue?
[Photo by LSN]
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This is a complete guess, but Rool’s suspension was “automatic” as a result of the red and therefore immediately effective, whereas it appears that those for Fae and Bamogo, who are suspended due to an accumulation of yellow cards, are only officially triggered by the League disciplinary committee, which decided that they would be served against Boulogne. It may be that there is prescribed interval between the day on which the committee meets and the first day the suspension can be served, perhaps with the idea that a manager needs to know who he has available for selection.
Why the accumulated yellow suspensions aren’t equally “automatic” remains a mystery, however.
Posted from
Italy
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I can answer this. The LFP’s disciplinary committee meets every Thursday, where they review decisions from the previous weekend. But their decisions take affect from the following Monday. So players with yellow card accumulation can play the next match but not the one right after. However, a red card is an automatic suspension that takes place immediately, with no buffer weekend. The LFP can then decide if further sanctions are in order, like an extra “on probation match.”
The reason Fae and Bamago’s suspension can be served in a cup match and not the league match the following weekend is that the LFP considers sanctions earned in many domestic competiion - the league, cup, league cup, and even the trophee des champions, as cumulative. This is helpful in most cases because cup matches are when you’d rotate players anyway, but it can also be a pain if it’s a semifinal or final.
Clubs beat the system by asking their players in danger of suspension to pick up yellow cards so that they won’t miss a crucial match.
Posted from
United States -
That what you get when you beat Descartes into every child in the country . . .
Posted from
Italy -
Ah, thank you Inara — that’s a wonderful loophole! (I’m with Ursus in wondering how a red card is a more “automatic” suspension than accumulated yellows, but I’m certainly not going to complain about it.)
Is it common for football federations to think that way, or is France alone in it, do you know? All I know is Italy, and there league and cup are different entities.
Posted from
United States -
I’m not sure how common this mentality is. I think France is pretty unique in that yellow card sanctions are across the board for all domestic competitions.
The red card is automatic because it’s obviously worse than just earning a bunch of yellow cards (three yellow cards within a series of ten domestic games merits a suspension). For the most part, coaches can plan around yellow card suspensions by choosing to bench players who are vulnerable to picking up another card if there is an important game coming up, or conversely, having them pick up an unnecessary yellow card so that they miss an unimportant game and can clear their slate. Of course it’s not always fullproof, and sometimes players get taken by surprise, but clubs find ways to use yellow card suspensions to their advantage.
What makes an automatic suspension harsher is that a player is more likely to miss a crucial match from a red card than a yellow card. Red cards are always unplanned, and if you get a red card, you sit out the next match no matter who you’re playing. Many times, if the red card is because of a violent tackle, the LFP will tack on an additional probation match (or a series of probation matches), where if the player picks up a yellow card during probation, he is suspended the next match as well. Plus the more red cards a player has, the harsher the LFP will judge their actions, and each red card takes away three points from the club’s Fair Play total. The last might seem irrelevant, but the LFP awards prize money for good behavior, and while the amount is nothing for the big clubs, for little ones like Le Mans and Nancy, fewer cards means a chance to win some extra much needed cash at the end of the season.
Posted from
United States -
It’s an indication of the fact that France is a much more centralised country than Italy. The FFF has a greater degree of control over the LFP than the FIGC has over the Lega Calcio. Similarly, the Coppa Italia is run by the FIGC, rather than the Lega (thus the non-transferability of cards).
One thing about the French system that I don’t understand is how they address red cards that are appealed. French referees are no more infallible than their counterparts anywhere else in Europe, and sometimes they get things wrong. The French system would appear to be set up only to allow the penalties for reds to be accentuated, rather than attenuated.
And a pedantic point that I hope doesn’t annoy Inara (who is without question one of the most knowledgeable people on the entire site, and has had to deal with much more than her fair share of nonsense this week), but it isn’t clear to me that reds are always “obviously worse” than an accumulation of yellows. If only because one can get a red for two yellows in the same match, and it isn’t clear to me how that is necessarily “worse” than accumulating three yellows over three or more matches.
Mais beuf. Allez OGCN (as they aren’t playing AJA, who seem to be slowly getting their act together).
PS to Inara. Are you actually in Italy now, or is that just the flag system acting up as usual?
Posted from
Italy -
I’m actually not sure about how appealing red cards works, though if a situation is really dire, I suppose a decision from Thursday might be effective immediately as opposed from the following Monday. Often the disciplinary committee will reduce the sentencing, but I’ve never seen them revoke a red card entirely. For example, last year against Toulouse, Kallstrom picked up a totally unfair red card when he was viciously elbowed by a Toulouse player right in front of the linesman, who didn’t call a foul, and in frustration, KK spat on the ground a little harder than usual, but the referee thought KK was spitting at him (though he was actually just spitting), and unfairly expelled him. Lyon appealed, and even the ref admitted to making a mistake, but that only got KK’s sentence reduced to a single one match ban (instead of the four that would ordinarily be the punishment), despite the fact that KK shouldn’t have gotten carded at all.
About the red card being obviously worse, I think the logic behind that is a player shouldn’t be picking up two yellows in a match (though again, some yellows are unfair in the first place). Getting two yellows in a single match is hardly the same as getting three yellows in ten matches.
And I wish I were in Italy! Unfortunately, it’s just the flag system. I’m still stuck in Washington at the moment.
Posted from
United States -
in case you guys are interested, the Nice-Le mans match is now being broadcast on the same tvants channel I was watching, and it was a pretty good stream (though in Arabic).
tvants://list.tvants.com/tvants/?k=3858a207b8082e9de1546b27e6292be8
Posted from
United States
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