Ligue 1 2012, Week 30 Preview And Fixtures: Lille Hosts Toulouse and Lyon Travels To Rennes
Montpellier and PSG are still battling for the title, but the race for third place is just as exciting.
Saturday 3/31; 19:00 CET/1:00 PM ET
Games such as these, that match an anemic attacking team with a strong defense against a prolific scoring side with zero defense, are always either laughably terrible in a fun way or mind-numbingly boring. There’s no in-between. NONE!
Pick: Sochaux, 3-2
Auxerre vs. Valenciennes
Saturday 3/31; 19:00 CET/1:00 PM ET
If Auxerre hope to avoid becoming this season’s “How in the hell did THEY get relegated” story, they’re going to need to actually start winning games. (Yes, Sochaux is even more shocking but they have a far smaller hole out of which to dig.)
They’ve only done that four times so far this season. That’s really unbelievably bad. Also, the sun is hot.
Pick: Auxerre, 2-1
Lorient vs. Evian
Saturday 3/31; 19:00 CET/1:00 PM ET
If Auxerre and Sochaux are currently duking it out for horror-story of the year, there’s a case to be made that Evian is a strong contender (just behind Montpellier) for success-story of the year. A fun-to-watch team (that didn’t exist in its current form 10 years ago) pushing for a top-half finish their first go-around in Ligue 1? Not too bad.
Lorient, on the other hand, are not any kind of story. Or if they are a story, they’re a bedtime story written by the guy that wrote the instructions to your VCR manual.
Pick: Draw, 1-1
St. Etienne vs. Nice
Saturday 3/31; 19:00 CET/1:00 PM ET
This isn’t really the kind of game St. Etienne can afford to not win if they’d like to be playing in Europe next season. So, good thing they’re playing Nice.
Pick: St. Etienne, 3-1
Bordeaux vs. Dijon
Saturday 3/31; 19:00 CET/1:00 PM ET
The standard line* you’ll hear in the case of team like Bordeaux goes something like “well, they waited too long to get it all together this season, but there’s no way the positive momentum they’ve built down the stretch doesn’t carry over into next year.”
That is so dumb! There are, like, 37 ways that momentum doesn’t carry over into next year!
Pick: Bordeaux, 2-1
*For the purposes of this strawman, at least.
Nancy vs. PSG
Saturday 3/31; 21:00 CET/3:00 PM ET
Nancy managed to beat PSG, in Paris even, earlier this year! Surely that matters and should be seen as predictive?
Pick: PSG, 3-0
Caen vs. Ajaccio
Sunday 4/1; 17:00 CET/11:00 AM ET
This is a big game in terms of the whole “teams that are ‘safe’ but not actually safe” contest. It’s also gonna’ be really bad, probably.
Pick: Caen, 1-0
Lille vs. Toulouse
Sunday 4/1; 17:00 CET/11:00 AM ET
Game of the week, part one: Two very good but clearly imperfect teams with opposing strengths and weaknesses. It doesn’t often get so compelling as this. If one could watch a single game in all of European football this weekend (perish the thought) one could do much worse than to pick this particular contest.
Pick: Lille, 2-1
Rennes vs. Lyon
Sunday 4/1; 21:00 CET/3:00 PM ET
Game of the week, part two: There’s not as much riding on this contest as there is on the one that precedes it, nor does the matchup look quite as compelling, but with a not-insurmountable gap between 3rd and 7th and two very good and fun to watch teams, this is a very nice way to close out the slate.
Pick: Draw, 2-2
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