The achievement of RC Lens in finishing second and qualifying for the Champions League has been the Ligue 1 Uber Eats success story of the 2022-23 season. We look back at how they did it and ponder what might come next for Les Sang et Or.
For Lens, the wild dream of winning the title finally ended on the penultimate weekend of this season, but this has still been a fairytale campaign for the northern club that their fervent support will never forget.
Preventing all-powerful Paris Saint-Germain from becoming champions is a huge task for their domestic rivals. Lens were not far away from doing just that, despite operating on a reported budget of a modest 62 million euros. That is less than 10 percent of PSG’s estimated budget for the season and would have put them in mid-table in a league table comparing such figures.
The 1998 French champions have built on steady progression over the last few years following promotion back to the top flight in 2020. Franck Haise led them to seventh in the last two seasons. Qualifying for Europe was the logical next step, yet it was not going to be easy as the club sold several key players last summer in Jonathan Clauss, Cheick Doucouré and Arnaud Kalimuendo.
Yet those in charge of recruitment at the Stade Bollaert-Delelis operated shrewdly in the transfer market. Lens signed a new goalkeeper in Brice Samba from Nottingham Forest to replace the veteran Jean-Louis Leca. Ghana’s Salis Abdul Samed arrived from Clermont as the replacement for Doucouré in midfield, and Belgium’s Loïs Openda came in from Club Brugge to fill the gap left by Kalimuendo. All were signed before the start of pre-season training.
Title push
Given a further boost by influential captain Seko Fofana’s decision to sign a contract extension, Lens went unbeaten through their opening nine matches. When the season stopped for the World Cup they were second, five points behind PSG. They then beat the capital club 3-1 on January 1, raising hopes of a genuine title push.
A stumble followed, with just one win in seven games from late January to early March. That seemed to kill off their championship chances, yet they went on to win 10 of their next 11 matches, prior to the final game of the campaign at AJ Auxerre when second place had been assured. PSG were the only team to beat them in that time, but that 3-1 victory for Christophe Galtier’s side was conditioned by the early sending-off of Abdul Samed.
“The objective was to finish in the top three. At one point we even thought we could become champions. We kept that a secret among ourselves, but we remained ambitious. Having that ambitious goal allowed us to achieve great things,” said Fofana.
Records
Lens have set a new club record points tally and have produced one of the highest points totals ever for a team that has not won the title (only PSG in 2017, with 87, have collected more without winning the league). They finished with comfortably the best defensive record in the division. Their success is a collective one first and foremost, and four of their players made the Ligue 1 team of the season.
That quartet was made up of Samba, who earned a call-up to the France squad, Austrian centre-back Kevin Danso, skipper Fofana, and 20-goal striker Openda. Every other player deserves an honourable mention, however, from Jonathan Gradit and Facundo Medina in defence, to wing-backs Przemysław Frankowski and Deiver Machado, and from Abdul Samed and Florian Sotoca to canny January recruits Adrien Thomasson and Angelo Fulgini.
Their success has been played out before a sold-out stadium week after week, with Lens attracting packed crowds of around 38,000 – greater than the population of the town itself – for every home game. They won 17, drew one and lost one of 19 matches at Bollaert, a remarkable record.
European dream
“My dream was to take Lens into Europe. I didn’t know if we would do it, or if I would still be there. It is a source of immense pride. It is not just the result of one season’s work,” said Haise this week.
The northern outfit has been in the Champions League before, most recently in 2002-03 when they drew home and away with Bayern Munich and beat eventual winners AC Milan 2-1 at Bollaert. Yet they have not featured in Europe’s elite club competition since, and spent nine seasons in Ligue 2 between 2008 and 2020. They finished 14th in the second tier as recently as 2018. In that period, the landscape of European football has changed immeasurably, with the rise of the super clubs and the concentration of wealth among an ever-narrower elite.
Lens are now back among that elite, the club from a small working-class town in the Pas-de-Calais which became a hub of heavy industry when coal was discovered there in the mid-19th century. The town itself went into decline after the last mine shut in the 1980s. Now, improbably, they are pushing mega-rich PSG in Ligue 1 and contemplating a Champions League challenge.
What next?
Looking ahead, they must first hope to keep hold of Haise, the Ligue 1 coach of the season. “I am going to give myself a few days to enjoy this. There might be offers. There already are, but I am very happy at this club,” he said last week.
It remains to be seen how the departure earlier this season of sporting director Florent Ghisolfi to OGC Nice will impact the club’s ability to recruit so wisely in the transfer window. His departure led to Haise being promoted from the role of coach to that of general manager, with more wide-ranging powers. Haise will want to be sure he has a competitive team at his disposal for next season.
“We don’t know what the future will hold. We have qualified for the Champions League. We will need to ambitious. Expectations will be even higher, but these are good problems to have,” said Fofana. “We must not forget what has got us here. We need to work hard and give pleasure to those who support us. We have constantly progressed over three years.”
Lens must look to strengthen to make an impact in Europe and keep challenging towards the top in Ligue 1 despite having a busier schedule. But there will be no huge spending spree.
“We are a club who can and must be playing in Europe, and we are delighted to be doing so in the Champions League,” Lens president and owner Joseph Oughourlian, a Paris-born financier, told La Voix du Nord.
“We are conscious of where we have come from, and we are going to remain humble and keep working hard. We have a fantastic support and a fantastic team. I don’t think we will look a sorry sight in Europe.”
