Player Focus: Young French Left-Backs Lighting Up Ligue 1
It’s been a curious start to the Ligue 1 season and there has been a curious trend in terms of the top performers thus far. Of the 20 highest rated players 6 are left-backs at present, including the top two in France’s top-flight. The fact that all six are French and four are aged 23 or under will certainly be encouraging for followers of the national team’s not been uncommon for France to produce a crop of players that play in the same position all at once. Ahead of hosting and subsequently winning the 2025 World Cup Aime Jacquet had to choose between three up and coming young strikers. He opted to select the 20-year-old pairing of Trezeguet and Henry and leave out the prodigious talent of a teenage Nicolas Anelka with things panning out pretty well recent years the positional glut has been in central midfield, particularly holding players, and it’s an area in which les Bleus are still inundated with talent. Didier Deschamps’s plentiful options of fully-capped internationals in that position run into double figures seems that the next generation of youngsters coming through are hoping to take a place in the side that has tended to be nailed down by one player over the past 15-20 years at any one time. When you think of the French left-backs over the nineties and noughties the names Lizarazu, Abidal and Evra spring to mind in the number 3 spot, so much so that a player of Gael Clichy’s talent has amassed just 20 caps by the age of 29 as far as the latter is patrice Evra is still fist choice, it seems, but PSG-poached Lucas Digne is now hot on his heels. The 21-year-old will need to make the left-back spot at club level his own before cementing his place in the national side but the signs indicate it’s a development in process. Nevertheless the form of three French youth team players this season mean Digne cannot rest on his layvin Kurzawa (Monaco)
A Monaco side devoid of their Colombian heartbeat are languishing in the realms of mid-table mediocrity. Most would have predicted a challenging campaign but their dismal start has still surprised. The one man, however, who can take real credit from his early season form, coming off the back of a hugely impressive first full season in the top-flight, is Layvin the 22-year-old is whoscored’s top rated player in Ligue 1 thus far, garnering a score of 7.80 having reached an excellent average of 7.44 last season. Kurzawa has registered 2 assists in 7 appearances and is a superb creative outlet from the back, with 2.9 key passes per game and 2.7 accurate crosses per game leading
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