Ligue 1 champions Lille kick off the new league campaign on Sunday with a road outing against Metz looking to extend their unbeaten run in the matchup to six games.
Lille won both outings against Metz last season without conceding a goal and bookmaker 10Bet has the odds at 2.70 for the trend to continue.
※ Current Odds Date & Time: August 7th, 6:00 A.M. (EST)
Lille’s chances of repeating last season’s success don’t look great after manager Christophe Galtier walked out and the club sold a couple of key members of the squad, but things got off to a perfect start a week ago when they beat PSG in the French Super Cup 1-0.
It was another defensive masterclass in Tel Aviv from Lille, who conceded only 23 goals last season in Ligue 1. The result must be very encouraging for the side that lost goalkeeper Mike Maignan to Milan and midfield anchor Boubakary Soumare to Leicester City over the summer.
New manager Jocelyn Gourvennec faces a difficult job in keeping up last season’s standards and the first few weeks of the season will tell us a lot about Lille’s capabilities.
The first matchup in the league looks like a very favorable spot to start building momentum, but this season’s Metz side is expected to be completely different from the one which went on a horrible run to finish off last season.
Frederic Antonetti’s team had a very impressive start to the campaign but managed to win just once during the final 11 rounds of action. Les Grenats ended up finishing 10th, which was an impressive feat for a team that was in Ligue 2 just a couple of years ago, but things could’ve worked out even better.
Metz will hope to remain competitive in 2021-22 with Senegalese striker Ibrahima Niane back fit again. The 22-year-old got off to a red-hot start last season with six goals in six games but suffered an ugly knee injury, which derailed his campaign and also ended up hurting the team badly.
Niane has pace to burn and his presence will make Metz a very dangerous side even for the top dogs of the league like Lille. Combined with Farid Boulaya’s ability to score and create, Antonetti has a good one-two punch at his disposal, which is bound to hurt plenty of teams during the new season.
