Appetite and alchemy turn Angers into Ligue 1’s surprise package

YOU will see few better free-kicks this season than the one smashed in by Rachid Alioui for Angers at Toulouse on Wednesday night.

With two minutes remaining and the score 0-0, the Morocco international let fly from 30 yards with a magnificent right-foot shot that soared high over Toulouse’s defensive wall before devilishly plunging beneath the crossbar.

Deep into stoppage time he added a second goal, haring up the pitch in support of Casimir Ninga and then steering a low shot past Toulouse goalkeeper Baptiste Reynet from his team-mate’s unselfish pass.

It was the second game in succession in which an Angers substitute had been the match-winner. Last weekend, Ninga came off the bench and scored an 11-minute hat-trick to give his side a 4-1 win over Saint-Étienne. Alioui came on with just under half an hour remaining at Toulouse and proved almost equally effective.

The Ligue 1 table after 6 games – PSG open up a small lead after their second consecutive 1-0 league win. OM in 5th. Angers surprise 2nd.

Next games: Tuesday & Wednesday pic.twitter.com/aQ50opmTRp

— Mohammed Ali (@mohammedali_93) September 22, 2019

“Last Sunday, Casimir got a hat-trick. Tonight it’s me who scores,” he said after the game. “Each time, we have a hero.”

With Paris Saint-Germain slipping to a shock 2-0 defeat at home to Reims, Angers’ victory left them level on points with the defending champions at the top of the Ligue 1 standings. The club with the fourth-smallest budget in the French top flight sits in second place, three points above sixth-place Marseille, six points above 11th-place Lyon and nine points above 18th-place Monaco. With 15 goals scored in seven games, Angers also boast the best attack in the division.

Toulouse should probably have expected Stéphane Moulin’s side to finish the game strongly. Renowned for their lung-busting industriousness, Angers covered more ground than any other team in Ligue 1 last season (4,178.4km) and recorded the furthest cumulative distance run at high intensity (915.2km).

The team’s hard-working style has become known in France as la dalle angevine (dalle being a slang word for hunger) and it has been a central feature of their play since they secured promotion from Ligue 2 in 2015. Angers have finished ninth, 12th, 14th and 13th since their return to the French elite, during which time they have acquired a reputation as a particularly awkward team to come up against. “I don’t understand how their players can enjoy themselves,” said an exasperated Hatem Ben Arfa after Nice had ground out a 2-1 win over Angers in January 2016.

Angers’ all-action approach has helped them to make light of their budgetary constraints and it is something that is taken into account when they are scouting for new players.

“The staff sometimes ask me to look at a player to see if his athletic qualities correspond to the demands of the coach,” fitness coach Benoît Pickeu (younger brother of general manager Olivier Pickeu) told L’Équipe last month. “We’ve turned players down on occasion because their physical tests weren’t satisfactory. We knew that at a certain point, things would come unstuck.”

Angers’ attention to detail in the transfer market has been another important element in their success. They have lost key players on a yearly basis – Sofiane Boufal and Jonathan Kodjia in 2015, Romain Saïss in 2016, Nicolas Pépé in 2017, Karl Toko-Ekambi in 2018 – but by smartly reinvesting the transfers fees they have received, they have managed to continue punching above their weight.

This summer was no different, with Flavien Tait leaving for Rennes in a €10 million deal and former Arsenal midfielder Jeff-Reine Adélaïde joining Lyon in exchange for €25 million. Chief talent-spotter Olivier Pickeu used the money to bring in a trio of players from Nîmes – Alioui (who joined on a free transfer), Sada Thioub and Antonin Bobichon – as well as signing Ninga from relegated Caen and plucking promising attacking midfielder Mathias Pereira Lage from second-tier Clermont.

BEST OVER 2.5 GOALS LIGUE 1 ⚽

Nice 100% Angers 83% Monaco 83% Amiens 67% Nimes 67% St Etienne 67% Lille 50% Lyon 50% Metz 50% Nantes 50% PSG 50%

(after matchday 5) pic.twitter.com/Pd0O4WfEK5

— ThePuntersPage.com (@ThePuntersPage) September 24, 2019

“We have a great group, a hell of a collective, and everyone pulls in the same direction,” said midfielder Baptiste Santamaria after the victory over Toulouse. “Us old guys make sure to welcome the new guys and they blend themselves into the group. We need to maintain that alchemy.”

Moulin, who played in midfield for the club in the late 1980s, has become accustomed to the annual churn of players during his eight years in the Angers dug-out. Although it inevitably pains him to see promising talents like Pépé and Reine-Adélaïde depart, he harbours no illusions about his club’s place in the grand scheme of things.

“Obviously, we’d prefer to keep our best players, but that’s how our club works,” the 52-year-old said at the start of the season. “We know very well that once they reach a certain level, they need to continue their progress somewhere else, and we have to start again with new players.”

If a continual state of flux exists within the changing room, the same cannot be said at management level. Moulin, Olivier Pickeu and club president Saïd Chabane have been working together since 2011 and the stability they provide helps to maintain a sense of calm when things don’t go quite according to plan, such as when the team lost 6-0 at Lyon in their second game of the campaign.

“The directors never get carried away after a thrashing like the one at Lyon or a series of defeats,” said long-serving centre-back Romain Thomas. “We say things to each other frankly and we move on.”

Angers will celebrate their 100th anniversary on October 10 and have already marked the occasion with a gala game against Arsenal at the end of July. But while the weeks ahead will offer ample opportunity for reminiscing about the past, the club from western France has plenty to look forward to in the future.

Work is under way to increase the capacity at Stade Raymond Kopa from 17,000 to 20,000, talented young players like 18-year-old left-back Rayan Aït-Nouri continue to emerge from the academy and with Moulin’s men riding high in Ligue 1, nobody in Angers is looking back.