Ligue 1 Review | Focus on Olivier Giroud and Hamza Igamane as Lille’s goals dry up | OneFootball

“We don’t show that we want to kill the opponent,” said Lille OSC fullback Thomas Meunier after their 2-0 loss to RC Strasbourg Alsace on Sunday afternoon. The goals that had been flowing for most of the season have dried up for Lille in recent weeks, with only one scored in their last four matches across all competitions. It’s a situation that has put the focus firmly on Olivier Giroud and Hamza Igamane’s form. 

Both players joined Lille in the summer, with the club needing to replace the outgoing Jonathan David and Mohamed Bayo. Giroud joined on a free transfer from Los Angeles FC at the start of the window. The 2018 World Cup winner would turn 39 in September and seemed to represent a luxury back-up, while Igamane was earmarked early on as a replacement for David. 

Despite Lille settling on Igamane’s profile, it would take them until after the season had already begun before they completed a transfer with Rangers. Without any competition, Giroud rolled back the years, starting and scoring in the opening two games of the campaign, a 3-3 draw with Stade Brestois and a 1-0 win over AS Monaco. 

A false dawn at Stade du Moustoir

Igamane would arrive a day before the third fixture, which was away to FC Lorient. Giroud was rested for the match after picking up an injury, while Igamane would start on the bench. At half-time with the score at 0-0, Bruno Génésio would turn to Igame and would be rewarded with a statement debut, as his new striker scored twice as Lille won 7-1. 

After the demolition, Génésio likely would have had a pleasant headache as he tried to figure out how he would balance two strikers, who had both hit the ground running. The natural assumption would be that Giroud would slowly be reduced more to a bench and important games role, while the youthful Igamane would take the brunt of the workload. 

However, the head coach has instead relied heavily on Giroud in the league, with the 39-year-old starting every match (bar one, the 2-0 defeat to OGC Nice) that he has been fit for, while Igamane is used predominantly as an impact player off the bench in Ligue 1 and as the starter in the majority of the UEFA Europa League fixtures. It’s a situation that doesn’t look as if it has suited either, with neither flourishing in their respective role. 

Don’t keep failing until you succeed

Igamane has performed better of the two, scoring twice more in the league and three times in Europe, while Giroud has not scored in Ligue 1 since the victory over Monaco on the 24th of August, but did manage to score the winner against SK Brann on the 25th of September. For a club that has the fifth-most amount of goals in Ligue 1, it reveals the heavy lifting that the two strikers’ teammates have been doing. 

This came to a head on Sunday when Giroud was caught out in an embarrassing moment when he tracked back to defend within his own half. The striker looked to play a woefully underhit backpass to the goalkeeper, Berke Özer. The ball didn’t seem to travel half the distance it needed to reach Özer, and was stolen by Emanuel Emegha, who would score the second and final goal of the evening. 

In his pre-match press conference, Génésio would call on the World Cup winner to keep trying to score, saying, “Keep failing until you succeed.” However, that’s been the entire problem of this current attack: it’s failing in the same way but expecting different results. It leaves a lasting impression that Génésio and the club have become too mesmerised by Giroud’s status and history that they are no longer making decisions that will get the best out of the 39-year-old. It feels like something needs to change in the attack, be it Igamane starts, or they start together. 

This week’s Ligue 1 sub-plots

GFFN | Nick Hartland