what to expect for the great return of Ligue 1?

For its first Ligue 1 match after the takeover of American multimillionaire John Textor, Olympique Lyonnais will play in Brest on Wednesday at 9 p.m. with the desire to create, finally, a positive dynamic, a match to be experienced live and in fully in Europe 1 Sports.

The six-week break was undoubtedly beneficial to the Lyonnais, physically but also tactically, while their new coach, Laurent Blanc, only arrived in October.

Friendly matches not reassuring

“We corrected a lot of things,” slipped midfielder Maxence Caqueret at a press conference on Monday. “We find ourselves better and we communicate more. Before, we were almost silent on the pitch. We had the opportunity to talk with the staff, the management, about what was going well and what was not.

The friendly matches played by OL in the wake of their two stages in Spain then in Dubai, concluded with a defeat against the promoted Italian Monza (2-1), did not however reassure.

The former coach of the France team has also expressed his wish to “improve the team” during the winter transfer market. “It is fundamental for the club, to recover a better place than the one currently occupied”, pleaded Laurent Blanc.

The player: Kylian Mbappé already back

Kylian Mbappé does everything quickly. Supersonic on the pitch, the star of the France team and Paris Saint-Germain is already “available” for the reception of Strasbourg on Wednesday (9 p.m.), just ten days after the World Cup final lost against Argentina (3 -3, 4 tab to 2).

“After talking with him, Kylian wanted to join us fairly quickly,” said his coach Christophe Galtier at a pre-match press conference on Tuesday. “That doesn’t mean there won’t be a time when (Mbappé will) have to recover, not required on a physical level but on a mental level.”

This early return to the field, when he could have benefited, like other globalists, from ten days of rest, is undoubtedly due to a desire to remove the painful memory of the final of the planetary tournament, in which he was scored, in vain, a hat-trick. What better way to forget Qatar than to keep scoring? Top scorer in the World Cup (eight), the Bondynois is also the best director in Ligue 1 for the moment (12 goals).

The figure: 45 days

Never had the mid-season been so long: 45 days separate the 15th day from the 16th. This curiosity is explained by the will of the organizers of the Mondial-2022 to avoid the suffocating summer temperatures of Qatar.

It was therefore from November 20 to December 18 that the competition took place, offering, on the tails side, two weeks of vacation to the players and respite to relieve their physique, but on the tail side, a very dense second part of the season. Some coaches also fear that the accumulation of games at this time of year is a source of injury.

“With this series of matches, we don’t know how the players’ bodies will react,” explains Auxerre coach Christophe Pélissier. “By multiplying the matches, we do not put them in the best conditions, with the risk of injury in cold weather and on more difficult grounds. We will find out, even if we have tried to prepare for this consistently for three weeks. “