Marked for Frédéric Lambert
From our football correspondent
Steady
Squad19 Apr 2027
Mads Bidstrup 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.
Squad19 Apr 2027
Words at Sochaux training over how hard people work
Somebody said out loud what several people had been thinking. Julien Masson 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.
Squad19 Apr 2027
“If you cannot run for the shirt, somebody else will wear it.” No name was used and none was needed; every player in that room knew who it was for.
Back issues
From our football correspondent
Upbeat
Match12 Dec 2026
Nobody wins at Sochaux
10 home matches unbeaten. Visiting sides arrive already talking about the atmosphere, which is usually the sign that they have half-lost before kickoff.
Squad14 Dec 2026
Kenny Quetant 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.
Squad14 Dec 2026
Words at Sochaux training over how hard people work
Somebody said out loud what several people had been thinking. Julien Masson 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.
Match12 Dec 2026
It finished 1‑0, and it was Boubacar Fofana’s afternoon: on the scoresheet when it mattered, and the reason the points belong to Sochaux.
Player ratings14 Dec 2026
Boubacar Fofana was on a different afternoon to everybody else
8.01. There are performances a supporter describes to somebody who was not there and cannot quite convey; this was one, and the number does not help either.
Squad14 Dec 2026
“If you cannot run for the shirt, somebody else will wear it.” No name was used and none was needed; every player in that room knew who it was for.
From our football correspondent
Upbeat
Player ratings7 Dec 2026
Successful dribbles: 35. There is a particular sort of despair on a full-back's face by the seventieth minute, and it was on display.
Squad7 Dec 2026
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.
Squad7 Dec 2026
“The easiest signature of my career.” Frédéric Lambert and Sochaux agree another 2 years, and the manager can plan around him rather than about him.
From our football correspondent
Uneasy
Squad9 Nov 2026
Some afternoons a goalkeeper is the team. 11 saves, several of them the sort nobody expects to see stopped, and a scoreline that flatters everybody in front of him.
Squad9 Nov 2026
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.
Match7 Nov 2026
Sochaux make home a hard place to visit
8 without defeat on their own grass. The pitch has not changed; the crowd has — louder earlier, and quicker to sense when the opposition would rather be somewhere else.
Squad9 Nov 2026
“I pick players who do the work. All of it.” No name was spoken; every camera still turned to Frédéric Lambert, and the manager let it.
Squad9 Nov 2026
Samy Baghdadi 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.
Match7 Nov 2026
1‑1, and both dressing rooms will call it two points lost. A draw that asked plenty of questions and answered none of them.
From our football correspondent
Steady
Player ratings5 Oct 2026
Successful dribbles: 51. There is a particular sort of despair on a full-back's face by the seventieth minute, and it was on display.
Player ratings5 Oct 2026
Julien Masson pops up at the right end — 7.94
7.94, 1 on the scoresheet, and the specific comedy of a back-four player celebrating like somebody who does this every week. He does not, and that is exactly why the ground reacted the way it did.
Squad5 Oct 2026
Julien Masson 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.
Squad5 Oct 2026
“The easiest signature of my career.” Frédéric Lambert and Sochaux agree another 1 years, and the manager can plan around him rather than about him.
Squad5 Oct 2026
“If you cannot run for the shirt, somebody else will wear it.” No name was used and none was needed; every player in that room knew who it was for.
Squad5 Oct 2026
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.
Boardroom5 Oct 2026
Wages eat 96% of everything Sochaux earn
There is a figure at which a wage bill stops being ambitious and becomes the reason nothing else is possible, and this club has reached it. Nothing is left over for a transfer, a stand or a rainy afternoon.
Match3 Oct 2026
It finished 1‑1, and it somehow always looked like it would. One of those afternoons where the table moves less than the tempers.
Player ratings5 Oct 2026
Noah Gomes changes it off the bench
He was not in the side at half past three and he had settled it before five. Half an hour, and Sochaux had a different afternoon.
From our football correspondent
Steady
Match5 Sep 2026
Rarely has this fixture seen a display like it: 3‑0 against Bourg-Peronnas, and it could have been more.
Squad7 Sep 2026
Julien Masson 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.
The terraces7 Sep 2026
There is a particular warmth a ground reserves for a 20-year-old it feels ownership of. Kenny Quetant has it now, and everything he does for the rest of his time here will be measured against the goodwill he was handed for free.
Squad7 Sep 2026
Kapit Djoco 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.
Player ratings7 Sep 2026
Marked 8.01 — the sort of number a correspondent writes down twice to be sure. Everything he tried came off, and what he did not try was not worth trying.
Squad7 Sep 2026
“Nobody here is above being told.” It was not said with a name attached, but the dressing room can count, and so can everybody who was listening.
Squad7 Sep 2026
A place in the month's best eleven for Mehdi Jeannin
Four or five weekends of consistency, judged against everybody in the division doing his job. Mehdi Jeannin has come out of that comparison in the side, and Sochaux have had the benefit of every one of those afternoons.
Player ratings7 Sep 2026
Successful dribbles: 14. There is a particular sort of despair on a full-back's face by the seventieth minute, and it was on display.
Market7 Sep 2026
“There is a gap, and pretending there is not helps nobody.” Neither side has moved, and the calendar is working for exactly one of them.
From our football correspondent
Triumph
Market24 Aug 2026
$1.7M from Sochaux for Jacques Berger. Money is money, but the dressing room has lost the man it looked to.
Squad24 Aug 2026
A knee injury of the worst kind for Alvin Arrondel
107 days on the estimate, and a long, private, unglamorous year of a rehabilitation nobody watches. Chamois Niortais lose a footballer; he loses considerably more than a season.
Player ratings24 Aug 2026
A brace, and Rémi Lemoine takes the afternoon — 8.48
There is a particular kind of quiet from an away end watching one man score twice. Rémi Lemoine provided it, and the 8.48 beside his name is if anything generous to everybody else.
The terraces24 Aug 2026
The accountants will call it good business and they will be right, which is not the point anybody outside the boardroom is making. Jacques Berger was one of the reasons people came, and $1.7M does not replace that by itself.
Market24 Aug 2026
The name of Mathieu Poirier has come up in conversations Chamois Niortais were not part of. Nothing formal, nothing signed — but nothing about it accidental either.
Match22 Aug 2026
4 wins on the spin now, and the question has changed from whether the run ends to who ends it. Confidence like this cannot be bought; it has to be earned exactly this way.
Market24 Aug 2026
Sochaux paid $45.0K and Chamois Niortais took it, which is the whole story in one sentence. The longer version involves a wage budget and will be told all season.
Match22 Aug 2026
It finished 2‑1, and it was Rémi Lemoine’s afternoon: on the scoresheet when it mattered, and the reason the points belong to Chamois Niortais.
Player ratings24 Aug 2026
Successful dribbles: 19. Every time he got the ball somebody had to make a decision, and every time the decision was wrong.
From our football correspondent
Steady
Market24 Aug 2026
Forli come back empty-handed
The bid was some way short and Sochaux did not need long over it. Nobody in the game reads a first refusal as the end of anything.
Squad24 Aug 2026
Julien Masson 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.
The terraces24 Aug 2026
Boards get told what they have done wrong for years and hear nothing on the days they get it right. This is one of those days: Jacques Berger from Chamois Niortais for $1.7M, and a ticket office having a very good morning.
Squad24 Aug 2026
Words at Sochaux training over how hard people work
Somebody said out loud what several people had been thinking. Samy Baghdadi 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.
Player ratings24 Aug 2026
Successful dribbles: 15. Every time he got the ball somebody had to make a decision, and every time the decision was wrong.
Market24 Aug 2026
Nobody sells a season ticket on a signing like this. Every manager who has been through a bad October wants one anyway, and Sochaux have gone and got theirs early.
Squad24 Aug 2026
“Nobody here is above being told.” It was not said with a name attached, but the dressing room can count, and so can everybody who was listening.
Market24 Aug 2026
Sochaux bring in an old head
Frédéric Lambert is 35 and has run out of things to prove. What he has left is where to stand, when to slow it down and what to say at half-time, and none of that is on a fitness chart.
Match22 Aug 2026
Nil-nil, and few chances worth the name. Stade Lavallois came to defend and left with exactly what they came for.