Ugly, Ugly, Ugly: Brest, Toulouse, and Ligue 1 Week 28

Brest is an ugly team. There are no two ways about this. Apparently, the team policy demands a quota of guys wear long hair in a pony tail when playing, always a bad look - see defender Paul Baysse, midfielder Jhon Jairo Culma, or midfielder Bruno Grougi. Further, scruffy or wispy facial hair infests many a Brestois mug, including Culma and Baysse and extending to captain Jonathan Zebina in defense. Then there are the awkward looking types, such as Mario Licka and his wavy but not quite modeled blonde hair. Their coach, Alex Dupont, looks like a cartoon version of an angry, doddering French man. Their jerseys are usually inoffensive Red and White affairs, but this past weekend they wore an ugly pale blue jersey, Man City like but without the quality or the style behind the jersey.

Ma zeh? What's with the haraah on the face?

They even have an Israeli on the team, Eden Ben Basat. Israeli men and women, I found from my experience there, are often very handsome, with the mix of various geographic origins, nice weather that encourages healthiness, tans, and surfing, and the unexplained tendency that leads to Israeli women having large breasts in testament to the country's status as the land of milk and honey all playing a role in the good looks. Eden Ben Basat, though, is ugly. The ne'er do well haircut that hangs over his forehead and the strands of dark hair on his face that look like something a cat hacked up do nothing to flatter the attacker.

Toulouse, for their part, is a rather handsome team. Sure, Etienne Capoue has a strange streak of white in his flattop hair, and Etienne Didot's look raises the question of whether his hairline is receding or his giant forehead is just growing and devouring space at an ever-increasing rate, but Toulouse is attractive. Daniel Congré, for example, demonstrates how to wear a pony-tailed dreadlocks look appropriately. All in all, we can't complain about Toulouse.

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What is the link between these two teams, if not their physical appearance? Why did we waste precious space on the Internet (oxymoron) detailing the looks of two Ligue 1 clubs? What the shit, in other words?

Well, while the two clubs' rosters don't look similar, Brest and Toulouse are known to share one major, relative trait: their style of play, which can be charitably described as boring, or more piercingly as ugly. Et, voila.

Toulouse and Brest entered Week 28 sharing the league lead for least goals allowed, at 24 apiece. That works out to 8/9 goals a game, or else .888 goals a game. This sturdy defense has buoyed both clubs' performance this year. Brest, who finished 13th and 16th the past two years and was on 12th, only 3 points clear of relegation but with a few teams below them and a solid goal differential of -2. That means, of course, that they had only scored a league-low 22 goals in the first 27 games, an average of .81 goals a game. Brest's games are the lowest-scoring in the five major leagues in Europe on average, and comfortably so. Toulouse, for their part, had scored 29 goals entering yesterday's contest, just better than a goal a game. Their added scoring punch had been enough to leave them on the fringe of Europe, 6th place in the table.

The nature of each side's defensive grip and means is a bit different. Brest is one of those clubs that has little choice but to play defensively. Their ideal game came against Marseille at home - they scored on a corner early on, then defended well for 75 minutes and absorbed the pressure successfully to win 1-0. Their emblematic bad game came against Montpelier away or Bordeaux at home last week; concede a goal in the first half (a lucky one against Montpelier, even), and then lack the offensive muster to come from behind or go ahead. They have only come back from a deficit to draw four times this year (compared to eight losses) and have not won once this year after falling behind. They are ranked as the league's worst in the second half of games per Ligue1.com's table.

Against Lorient in a Breton derby on Saturday, Brest had reason to open up and feel a little more confident. Their one 3-goal performance this season came against Lorient at home, and Lorient had a 12-match winless streak in Ligue 1 and a 9-match winless streak overall. They appeared to pose little threat to Brest, the travel was mild (90-minute drive, Google Maps says), and Brest needed a big game after the bad loss to Bordeaux.

In the first half, Brest got after it. The aforementioned Ben Basat scored a pretty goal with his back half-turned to net in the 11th minute, giving Brest the crucial lead they could clamp down on. Brest felt their oats and continued to press the flagging Lorient squad, creating several good chances and looking like a decent threat to add a second. When Lorient pushed forward, they found Brest defending with their usual panache, with the midfield line either five meters off the defenders line - giving no space to attackers against 8 players - or forming something of a diamond so that the holding midfielder and two wing midfielders interfered Lorient's plan ably enough. If you are a fan of defense, Brest's first half was something of a beautiful thing.

Whether overconfident or piercing too deep or not deep enough (failing to get that second goal), Brest's best-laid plans fell apart in the second half. There, Lorient, facing a "now or never" moment as attacker Jérémie Aliadière described it, regained initiative, punctured Brest's invulnerability with a goal off a corner, continued to press and possess, and gained a winner three minutes from time. Brest perhaps faced the problem of the donkey in a lion skin, opening their mouth to roar and finding two goals let in against them. Back down to 13th, though still 3 points away from relegation.

Toulouse has a bigger budget, more talent, and more hopes of developing into a bonafide two-way threat of a club. So argues, at least, Matthew Spiro. Toulouse could play more aggressively, he states, and with a direct showdown against Stade Rennes, one of the other European spot contenders, Toulouse had all the incentive yesterday to open up.

Again, in the first half Toulouse did the damn thang, playing aggressively, possessing the ball, and pressuring Rennes with their offense. On defense, Toulouse too defends with great numbers, their midfield line constantly retreating to a place just in front of their defenders, which makes it easy to start the counterattack if more challenging to follow through on it and score. Rennes struggled to break Toulouse down, while Toulouse struggled to take advantage of easy opportunities, such as defender Cheikh Mbengue mishandling a crucial touch in the box that could have led to a goal.

Football does not always obey logic, and often obeys logic in awkward forms. So it came right before the half for Toulouse, as they pressured Rennes into an own goal on an fluky clearance by defender Romain Danzé (video here). A 0-1 position against Toulouse is even worse than a 0-1 position against Brest, with Toulouse only conceding that lead four times this year (loss to PSG, draw against St. Etienne, 2-1 win against Evian, and...1-1 draw last week against Lorient). Toulouse made good on that promise, tightening the jaws and leaving Rennes with another big win, while the home team faced another frustrating result.

So what of ugliness? Brest went on the road and showed signs of moving past their ugliness, but ultimately could not hold to their defensive principles. In two games this year against Lorient, Brest has conceded 3 goals and scored 4. That marks 1/7 of goals scored in Brest games out of 1/14 of total games played to date. So maybe it's a derby fluke. Toulouse, meanwhile, took a longer trip to get to Bretagne, played aggressive enough to earn a goal, and then happily settled in to keep a clean sheet. It may have been ugly and dull, but Toulouse is now 4th in the league, which means Europa League. That is attractive, in any case.


Kick around the rest of the Ligue:

- Speaking of ugly: I'm re-learning to not jump to any hasty conclusions when writing about sports (or anything, but especially silly things like sports). That statement that Marseille would have a better chance than Lyon of righting the ship? Lyon has won two straight matches against direct competition, beating Lille at home and winning a derby away at St. Etienne on a late goal from struggling striker Bafetimbi Gomis (who is quite handsome, or so the lady of the house tells me) coming off the bench. Part of why I didn't like Lyon's chances, besides their uninspired play, was their schedule, with matches against those two clubs as well as PSG in the Coupe de France and Rennes away all coming in a four week span. They've taken those games as opportunities, and now sit just off Toulouse in 5th, a mere 4 points away from Lille and Champions League qualification, with games against Rennes and Toulouse still to come in the next few weeks (though both are away). I'm not going to get ahead of myself by predicting anything, but Lyon certainly is in the picture.

Marseille continues to nosedive in the Ligue, losing to Dijon (of last week's mustard squirt) at home. Again, things can change quickly, but Marseille might really be at the stage where they should focus on peaking in their cup matches (Coupe de la Ligue final against Lyon in April, Coupe de France quarterfinal Tuesday against an amateur Quevilly) and in the Champions League quarters against Bayern Munich, a tough but not impossible draw. With eight points and five teams separating them from earning a Europa League spot through Ligue play, but a comfortable twelve points between them and relegation, Marseille doesn't have that much to play for - apparently Ligue 1 doles out TV revenues in proportion to table finish, but even that might not be worth it as much as focusing on earning maybe one more round of Champions League this year against Real Madrid, and meanwhile putting their eggs in the cups.

- Only one team has defeated both Montpelier and Paris St. Germain, the runaway top duo of the table despite slip-ups this week. That team? TRtMTR favorite AS Nancy, which took advantage of a dubious penalty and two red cards against Montpelier to win 1-0, putting themselves three points clear of relegation and giving them seven points out of nine since fans broke into their dressing room and lit a firecracker a day after a loss. Montpelier's coach Rene Girard grumbled, justly perhaps, that it's hard to play "12 on 9". Fortunately, they only fell one point further behind PSG.

- Speaking of dressing rooms, Auxerre faced another tumultuous moment after losing 0-2 at home to Evian. Fans tried to storm the locker room immediately after the game. While no harm was done, Auxerre, which sunk to 20th in the table this weekend, fired their coach Laurent Fournier. Between the positive uptick Nancy's performance has undergone since their fan frenzy incident and Sochaux's two straight wins after firing their coach that put them just above Auxerre, it's clear that the team has examples to draw inspiration from. Of course, Auxerre fans also caused trouble a month and a half earlier when losing 1-3 at home to Nancy, so perhaps this spark won't light.

- Coupe de France matches this week, so there might be a write-up of that. Next week sees the title contenders face tough matches at home - PSG against Bordeaux, Montpelier hosting St. Etienne - but little else that stands out. Still, we'll be watching, in case another riot breaks out, or another exciting game, or else ugliness prevails some more. Until then.