Ligue 1 Review | Under Olivier Pantaloni, Lorient are dark horses for Europe | OneFootball

As the final whistle blew at the Allianz Riviera, the FC Lorient players looked as if they had the energy to go again, even as the OGC Nice players crumpled to the floor. Twice on Sunday afternoon, Nice had gone two goals ahead of Lorient, but each time, Les Merlus showed a relentlessness in whittling away the lead. Until finally, in the 95th minute, Noah Cadiou clattered the ball home to level the scores in a 3-3 thriller. 

What was striking about Lorient’s performance throughout the game was that their heads never once dropped. There was an unshakeable belief within the squad that they could come back and rescue the match. It was a powerful momentum, and one that seemed to fuel a crisis of confidence in their opponents, although admittedly that hasn’t been hard to do in recent months, particularly when Nice are playing at home, where they’ve not won in the league since the 29th of October. 

Still, nothing should be taken away from Lorient. This has been an impressive return for the club after winning promotion back to the top flight last season. Since the start of November, Les Merlus have lost only twice across all competitions, a defeat to title-challengers RC Lens and local rivals Stade Brestois. It’s a run of form that sees the club 9th in the table and only five points outside of Europe. Much of this success has to do with the arrival of head coach Olivier Pantaloni, who joined the club ahead of the 2024/25 season. 

Pantaloni rolls with the punches

After a decade as the AC Ajaccio head coach, Pantaloni surprised French football by leaving the Corsican club to succeed Régis Le Bris. In his first season in charge, he led Lorient to the Ligue 2 title, in what would be his third promotion campaign as a manager, having previously guided Ajaccio to Ligue 1 in his first stint in charge in the 2010/11 season and again in his second time around in 2021/22. For a manager who once admitted that he doesn’t have a career plan, he certainly seems to have a plan for Lorient. And the plan is devilishly simple. 

Pantaloni isn’t trying to reinvent the wheel and transform French football, but he has embraced what has traditionally made Lorient a Ligue 1 side: hard defensive work as a platform. On paper, Lorient’s defensive record is deceivingly poor. They’ve conceded 36 goals in 23 games, but when you then consider that a third of those were registered in their first four games, a better picture begins to emerge. 

In general, Lorient sit back and invite pressure on their backline; they only average around 45.3% possession per game in Ligue 1, and according to Opta, have the highest passes per defensive action in the league. On average, Les Merlus allow their opponents 18.4 passes in the final third before attempting to win the ball back. Despite this, they aren’t particularly a team that looks to hit their opponents in transition. 

What if Lorient can keep it up?

Lorient play with a bit more patience than expected, and generally will look to play the ball out from the back and through the lines unless their shorter avenues upfield are blocked, in which case they can then go more direct. A lesson they perhaps learnt from the 7-1 defeat to Lille OSC in the third game of the season, where they let the second half become a battle of transitions. Pantaloni has the players to make this system work. 

The academy product Pablo Pagis, in particular, is one of the starts of this team and a player who can make it all click. The forward is the club’s top scorer, having netted eight times already, adding to his total on Sunday with an excellent free kick in the first half. There’s a zip and energy to his movement that unsettled Nice while he was on the pitch. It’s hard not to think he might be the next, after Eli Junior Kroupi secured a move to the Premier League, to pick up interest from a far richer club. 

Lorient who started the season envisioning a battle to stay above the drop, will naturally be more focused on what’s below them than what’s happening above. Still, they shouldn’t be discounted from the European discussion. They’re well worth their position on the cusp of Europe. Of course, there will be some doubts over whether they can maintain this magnificent form until the end of the season, but until the cracks begin to show, Les Merlus should be considered dark horses in the race for Europe. 

This week’s Ligue 1 sub-plots

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GFFN | Nick Hartland