A brace, and Michy Meunier takes the afternoon — 8.73
There is a particular kind of quiet from an away end watching one man score twice. Michy Meunier provided it, and the 8.73 beside his name is if anything generous to everybody else.
3 wins in a row changes how opponents warm up: quieter, more glances across. Runs end, everybody knows that — but nobody in this dressing room is planning for it.
Squad7 Dec 2026
Words at Sochaux training over how hard people work
Somebody said out loud what several people had been thinking. Michy Meunier is at the centre of it, and the squad will now find out whether the standard rises or the pair of them simply stop speaking.
Ask anyone on the way out what separated the sides and you will get one name: Michy Meunier. 2‑0 against Bourg-Peronnas, and the applause at the whistle was mostly his.
David Tebili was at the centre of it, and by the time it was pulled apart there were three or four others involved. Training grounds are small places and long seasons make them smaller.
5 games without scoring. Strikers stop looking up, midfielders take the extra touch, and every shot that clears the bar is followed by a groan that has been building since the last goal.
It was not about football and everybody who saw it knows that. Two men who have to play together on Saturday said things at Sochaux this week that will take longer than a week to unsay.
Not a run of form — an actual step up, held for months. At 22 he is doing things at this level he could not do at the start of the season, and the coaching staff will tell you exactly which of them.
At 25 the improving is meant to be over. It is not: 3 points better than the mark taken at the start of the year, which is the sort of thing that happens to players who take the boring parts of the job seriously.
Some afternoons a goalkeeper is the team. 8 saves, several of them the sort nobody expects to see stopped, and a scoreline that flatters everybody in front of him.
It was not about football and everybody who saw it knows that. Two men who have to play together on Saturday said things at Sochaux this week that will take longer than a week to unsay.
15 defensive actions and a clean sheet at the end of them. A defender's afternoon can only be told by what did not happen, which is why nobody makes a highlights package out of one and every manager in the division would take it.
“Thirty minutes, door closed, everything said. We shook hands after.” Whatever was in the room stayed in the room, and Stefan Bajić trained the next morning like a man with less to carry.
The one version of being left out a player cannot argue with, and the one he takes worst. Somebody else has been better and the team sheet says so, in public, every week until it changes.
It was not about football and everybody who saw it knows that. Two men who have to play together on Saturday said things at Sochaux this week that will take longer than a week to unsay.
Squad10 Aug 2026
Julien Masson falls out with a teammate over standards
The oldest argument in any dressing room and the only one that is genuinely about football: one man thinks another is not putting enough in. It is also the row a manager privately does not mind having happened.
48 months left and silence from upstairs — no offer, no talks, nothing for his people to answer. Clubs that let a calendar do their negotiating usually end up negotiating with the calendar.
Solomon Loubao is 20, and for one weekend he was the best of everybody his age in the division. Nobody should build a career on it and everybody quietly does.