Paulo Fonseca’s LOSC seduces in France
Covered with praise following their crazy match against Monaco, Paulo Fonseca’s LOSC won over Ligue 1 supporters and observers alike.
How far away it seems, the time of the gloomy 0-0 of LOSC last season… since, the last to date, a very boring Lille – Bordeaux, water has flowed under the bridges. Paulo Fonseca has arrived, with a very ambitious promise: to bring the beautiful game back to the North. Since Rudi Garcia in 2013, no coach had focused his game plan on such an offensive philosophy. However, it was not for lack of trying, with Hervé Renard in 2015, then with Marcelo Bielsa two years later. Without success.
The bet, daring, was all the more so as the LOSC had to start a new cycle, marked by the departure of many players and by lower financial means than its six main competitors. The Lille council had an “Atalanta Project” in mind, synonymous with clever and inexpensive recruitment, highlighting training and a standard-bearing coach for the sports project. Doing well is better than saying well: ten players arrived for less than 26 million euros in transfer compensation, three young reserve players joined the first team and Paulo Fonseca was chosen to oversee this new-look LOSC .
Today, the time has come for the first observations. The club from the capital of Flanders can already boast of being one of the best Ligue 1 teams in the game. Beyond its ranking, which allows it to stick to the top 5, LOSC seduces with its ability to do the show. The media are devoting more and more time to Paulo Fonseca’s team. Cataloged as a simple outsider in European places at the start of the season, Lille managed to create a surprise, which does not fail to make observers react.
Like Lucien Favre’s Nice in 2017 or Régis Le Bris’ FC Lorient in 2022, the French public loves these surprising teams, favoring the romanticism of the beautiful game over tactical pragmatism. LOSC, which suffers from the strong exposure of PLM (Paris-Lyon-Marseille) on the national scene, benefits from this “beautiful game” effect. The northern club, which until then worked in silence, is becoming more expected. The defensive progress glimpsed before the match against Monaco can be grounds for hope: this LOSC could well be set to last at the top of the rankings. And if not, the style of play of “Atalanta of 59” will at least have had the merit of making his supporters dream this season.