MONEY IS NOW THE NAME OF THE GAME...LIGUE 1: THE BLESSING OR LE MALECITION(THE CURSE)

Money, Investment brings trophies or rather "buys" trophies, as its seen or said these days...the French Ligue 1 is reputable for the grooming of world class talents taking a cue from the modern age era of stars as Zinedine Zidane, Thierry Henry, Lilian Thuram, Fabian Barthez to mention a few...which made the " Golden Age" of 98 class that won the World Cup on home soil.

Now with the "Money Age" starting in 2003 by Russian Billionaire Roman Abrahamovic, seconded five years later by Abu dhabi billionaire Shiekh Khaldoon Mansour with the purchase of Manchester City, the "Money spending" bug was caught by the ligue 1,starting with the purchase of Le Parisien outfit PSG(Paris Saint Germain) by Nasser Al-khaleifi owning 70% of the club, also director of Qatar Investment Authority(QIA) and Al-jazzera Sports, seconded by the 66.66% owning of AS Monaco by Russian billionaire Dmitry Rybolovlev now trading home grown talents for "Big Name" signings.

Sportunes shows how much the home grown talents have put France and the French Championat  on world football map...

1998: The Fifa World Cup Winner's in 1998,had a squad made of mainly home grown talents like Thierry henry ( highest goal scorer for the Les Bleus) Pires, Trezeguet, Cristophe Dugarry, Barthez (winner of the Yashin award for the Best goal keeper of the tournament) & Laurent Blanc (former manager of France) all plying their trade in the Ligue 1.



2000: Although most of the all conquering French team were foreign based players, but the local based players courtesy of a Trezeguet golden goal from a Robert Pires assist held their own to lead Les Bleus to a record making triumph in the European Championships.

2001 - 2003: France dominated the early years of the new millennium where they were ranked 1st in the world and won two confederations cup titles. Albeit a spectacular world cup failure in Korea/Japan where they crashed out in the group stage without scoring a goal, Home boys such as Nicolas Anelka, Djibril Cisse, Ludovic Giuly, Philip Mexes, Sidney Govou, Gregory Coupet, Mikael Landreau all helped the French team with the Confed cup Glories.

2002-2008: France reached the world cup final in Germany during this era, with full home grown Frank Riberry shining bright in the tourney.  This period also saw Olympique Lyonnais dominate the Ligue 1 with home grown talents like Sidney Gouvou, Jeremy Toulalan, Karim Benzema,Abidal,Malouda.. While Imports such as Micheal Essien, Didier Drogba, Emmanuel Adebayor, Alex Song all cut their career teeth in the Ligue 1 during this Era.







2008-2012:  This Era saw The Lyon jinx finally broken as Bordeaux, Marseille, Lille and Montpellier all had a feel of the French Championat and  YES they did it with home grown players. This period also saw the likes of Yohan Gourcoff and Hatem Ben Arfa bear the title 'New Zidane' as they dazzled their way to league glory with Bordeaux and Marsseille respectively.

Although P.S.G started pumping money in later in this era, Montpellier still proved the bookies wrong by winning the league on the last game of the season,with home boys like captain Yapou Yanga Mbiwa, Olivier Giroud, Younes Belhanda making a good ridicule of big money signing Javier Pastore, Alex,Sirigu, Thiago Motta.

 

2012 - Date. This period is the 'Money answereth all things era' With P.S.G shattering local transfer records with the purchase of Zlatan Ibrahimovic, Thiago Silva, Lucas Moura, Ezequiel Lavezzi as they all helped the French capital club to their first league title in 18 years.



Monaco have also joined the party, Billionaire owner Dmitry Rybolovlev obviously bitten by the spending madness fly have recruited multimillion pounds signings like Radamel Falcao, Joao Moutinho, Jose Rodriguez, Ricardo Carvalho and Eric Abidal



With P.S.G snapping Edinson Cavani today, Sportunes can categorically say we now have a two horse race in the French league and we are scared of another duopoly just like in Spain and Germany.



Even with the France under 20 winning the world youth championships for the first time, there is still NO hope for the French National team as most of the lads will be overlooked in their various clubs due to the influx of money by the success driven club owners.

MONEY IS THE NAME OF THE GAME NOW