Angers is an historic city in the valley of the River Loire in western France famed for its massive castle, partly built by the early Plantagenet kings of England, which is home to the remarkable fourteenth century Tapestry of the Apocalypse. Visiting the castle to see the tapestry is one of the reasons why my wife Paulene and I have made the eight hour, seven-hundred- and twenty-three-kilometre drive in our planet saving Citroen e-C4 to be here, but another is that today SCO Angers are playing Olympique Marseille (OM) at the Stade Raymond Kopa in a Ligue 1 fixture. We have seen Angers play OM before, back in 2015 at the Stade Velodrome in Marseille (Angers won 2-1), but being the type of people who feel strangely compelled to watch football in as many French towns and cities as possible, this is an opportunity not to be missed. Also, it’s easier to get tickets for Angers v OM than it is get them for Ipswich Town away games, which I have therefore given up on. Meanwhile, Paulene is the only person in the world to be a fan of both OM and Paris St Germain!
From our hotel near the St Serge University, it’s a two-minute walk to the tram stop where a Ligne A tram takes us to Foch Haras from where we change to an articulated number one bus that makes its way up rue Paul Bert and rue Volney towards Saumuroise, where we alight (fare 1.70 euros) and then take a short walk down rue du Colombier to the Stade Raymond Kopa. The Stade Raymond Kopa was until 2017 called the Stade Jean Bouin, but since 2019 it has been undergoing its latest upgrade with two new stands being built. From rue du Colombier Stade Raymond Kopa now looks less like a football stadium and more like a large, perforated, grey metal box, largely because it is. The dark grey reflects the monochrome club colours of SCO Angers but could probably do with a few splashes of white or some groovy signage to jazz it up a little, especially on a grey, cloudy autumn day like today.
It’s about twenty past one and crowds are gathering in the street at the back of the Tribune Saint-Leonard awaiting the arrival of the Angers team who soon step out of a compact black and white coach and skulk into the stadium through an anonymous opening in its grey metal walls. A crowd of mostly children cheer and wave black and white flags whilst cheerless looking security guards look out from beneath frighteningly short haircuts. The players are greeted and ushered beyond the grey wall by people in shiny suits wearing huge white plimsolls, which make them resemble the children on the Magic Roundabout.
With the Angers players safely inside the stadium, an air of expectancy still lingers in the street outside and perhaps even increases because the OM team bus is now on its way. OM are without doubt the biggest club in France but they have no dodgy middle eastern state to bank-roll them and are instead mis-managed by a succession of incompetent owners who ride the football gravy train, sell any decent players, buy in those the top clubs don’t want and build up debts before moving on, leaving in their wake a sort of underfunded, Mediterranean version of Tottenham Hotspur. But OM supporters are all over France and are faithful to their club, they are also probably masochists.
At last, the blue lights of the police motorcycle escort appear and following behind the OM team bus, which parks up behind the lines of comically grumpy security staff and disgorges its cargo of shifty looking athletes into the grey metal box. We stand next to a man who shouts insults at the players and doesn’t seem to notice the scary looks he receives from a huge security guard standing just a metre away. With the excitement over, Paulene and I head round the corner to the fanzone, where there is a bouncy castle, a bar, tables and chairs and a trestle table from which an attractive young couple are flogging a limited range of club ‘merch’. Also here is a collection of balloons arranged in the shape of a heart to promote ‘October Rose’, an annual event in French football to raise awareness of and money for research into breast cancer. Most clubs produce a special shirt and associated merchandise and have a fixture dedicated to it. Today, Angers will be wearing their special shirt. Paulene shows solidarity by buying a pink scarf and we are both given pink ribbons to wear on our coats. With an hour still until kick off I make a trip to the bar for a 50 cl ‘glass’ of Affligem beer (9 euros for the beer and 1 euro for the re-usable ‘October Rose’ branded cup). It might be expensive and a bit too cold, but Affligem is a decent enough beer (even if it is now owned by Heineken) which at 6.7% alcohol by volume offers a strength and flavour no one would dare allow football fans in England to enjoy.
Having supped the Affligem, we head into the grey box. There are no turnstiles, just people with scanners to check your ticket or the QR code on the screen of your mobile phone. Everyone, everywhere, as at all French football game wishes you “bon match” and everyone is given a polythene flag displaying the SCO Angers club badge. Inside the grey box it is as grey as it is outside, with the steel frame of the stand painted grey or coated with what looks like a hard, grey pulp or even icing. The perforated metal walls let in a lot of light however and the concourse is spacious, although the toilets aren’t and streams of people made anxious by full bladders snake out of them.
There are two flights of stairs up to our seats in the lower tier of the Tribune Colombier but conveniently our seats are at the end of the row. Three unaccompanied youths, who look no more than twelve years old sit in front of us but then move to the seats next to me, and a nervous looking man with dark receding hair and a young boy sit in front of us instead; he gives the three boys a slightly quizzical and disapproving look as if to ask, “Vos meres savent-elles que vous etes ici?” (Do your mothers know you are here?)
When the game begins it is OM who get first go with the ball, which they are aiming at the goal in front of the Tribune Colombier, which is the fullest of the four stands and is where Paulene and I are sitting. Somewhere far behind us is the suburb of Trelaze where the number one bus that we caught was heading. Today, OM are wearing a change kit of all navy blue whilst Angers are not in their usual black and white stripes that make them look like a classy, Gallic Harwich & Parkeston FC but instead wear their special, all-white with a pink splodge on the front, ‘October Rose’ kit.
The ball is quickly booted into touch from kick off as if OM never really wanted first go with it anyway. Over to our left in the end of the otherwise mostly empty Tribune Jean Bouin the OM ultras are in full voice, waving banners and jumping about, as they have been since we arrived. “Marseille! Tum de tum, Te dum dum! Marseille!” they chant, according to the scribble in my notebook. It is OM who have the first shot on goal when after nine minutes Igor Paixo strikes the ball wide of an Angers post at the end of a coherent passing move. Two minutes later, and as I am afflicted by wafts of body spray from the nervous looking man with a receding hairline sat in front of me, Anthony Lopes the Angers goalkeeper gesticulates unhappily at the players in front of him. A pattern begins to emerge as another good passing move from OM in the twelfth minute ends with Tochukwu Nnadi also shooting wide.
Angers haven’t featured much so far but this of course means that in the fourteenth minute a cross from the left sails over the head of Angers’ Lilian Raolisoa only for it to strike an OM defender deflect back onto Raolisoa and into the goal knocking Raolisoa over in the process. It’s a comedy goal as many that OM concede are, but it gives Angers a surprise one-nil lead, nevertheless. “Allez Angervins” chant the home crowd and the nervous looking man in front stands up to wave his polythene flag and jump up and down, and he encourages the boy to do so too. Perhaps he’s not so nervous after all.
A goal down, some of the OM players begin to roll around on the floor when the opportunity arises but the referee Monsieur Jeremie Pignard ignores them quite brilliantly and as the first half of the first half fades into the past OM shoot wide again and then do nothing memorable with the game’s first corner before Angers make an inevitable quick break away, only for Amine El Ouazzani to shoot spectacularly high and wide of the OM goal.
The first third of the match is over and to mark the occasion Raolisoa slices a clearance to give OM a second corner, but OM only proceed to miss a couple more chances and Paixao has a header easily saved by Lopes when he probably should have scored. Another OM corner is then easily cleared before finally, with seven minutes left until half time, a cross from Timothy Weah is headed firmly but simply into the Angers net from close range by bearded OM captain Himad Abdelli. “Ole, Ole, Ole” chant the OM fans to the tune of the Beatles’ “Yellow Submarine”. In all the stands OM fans stand up to cheer and unlike in England where people are outraged when an “away” supporter sits in the “home” end, no one seems that bothered, but then unlike the English, the French like to save their anger for the things that matter, like liberty and equality.
Three minutes remain until half time and OM up the corner count again when Lopes saves another shot, this time from Amine Gouiri. From the resultant corner, despite being 1.83m in height Nouhoum Kamissoko seems to go un-noticed by the Angers players and he heads firmly into the middle of the goal and OM lead 2-1. A minute of added on time is added on but nothing changes except for a lot of cheering from pre-pubescent voices; Paulene suggests that someone has just found a stash of sugar.
Half-time is a time to vent some spent Affligem, buy a bottle of water (3 euros) and see the Angers mascot, Scoty the Panda swagger onto the pitch in a somewhat surly manner with feet at ‘ten to two’, perform some perfunctory task and then frighten a couple of children and swagger back into the stand. My father, a naval man, would have said he walks like a “dockyard matey”. We had hoped to meet Scoty in the fanzone but we’re not so disappointed that we didn’t now, he just looks like a fat middle-aged bloke in tracky bottoms with a panda head on; added to which the pink splodge on the front of his October Rose shirt makes him look like he’s been stabbed or is coughing up blood.
It is a minute past four when the football resumes, and OM are now sending the ball towards the cathedral and castle in the city centre and the Angers ultras in the Tribune Coubertin. OM quickly win another corner and Lopes saves from Nnadi, before with the new half twelve minutes old Angers make a first substitution, swapping the wonderfully named Louis Mouton (it means Louis Sheep but sounds like Louis Vuitton) for the equally wonderfully named Prosper Peter (just nice alliteration). The impact is immediate as Amine Gouiri runs at the Angers defence and into the penalty area and has his ankle tapped by Yassin Belkhdim and Monsieur Pignard awards a penalty. Gouiri’s penalty is saved but Lopes can only parry the shot and Gouiri scores from the re-bound. It’s 3-1 to OM.
The game moves into its final third and Paulene and I resign ourselves to the nervous looking man with the receding hair and child not returning, he left at the end of half-time and hasn’t been seen since. I didn’t like the smell of his body spray anyway, so am quite pleased. Prosper Peter is looking alert for Angers as his name suggests to me he should be, and as the game moves on through the sixty-fifth and sixty-sixth minutes he heads wide and then delicately flicks a cross onto the OM cross bar. Angers’ Emmanuel Biumla then fouls Gouiri and consequently sees Mr Pignard’s yellow card before the OM ultras embark on a chorus of “Aux Armes, Nous Sommes les marseillais, Et nous allons gagner, Allez l’OM!” (To arms, We are the Marseillais, And we are going to win, Go OM!) and the OM fans scattered throughout the rest of the stadium attempt to echo the chant.
More substitutions are made by Angers and this time the effect is positive as three minutes later they win a corner and in defending it Nnadi wrestles Carlens Arcus to the ground and Mr Pignard awards a penalty to Angers, which Amine El Ouazzani quickly and confidently despatches past Jeffrey de Lange, who effectively steps out of the way of the kick, and the score is 3-2. Nnadi is booked. “Lo lo lo, Allez les SCO’s” sing the home supporters optimistically, and then sing it again and again, and again. “Faites du bruit” (Make some noise) announces the scoreboard simultaneously advertising a barbers’ shop called ‘Point-Cut’, and they do.
The final ten minutes approach and there is hope for an unlikely Angers comeback as OM make a couple of substitutions. “Allez les SCO’s” continue the home supporters but once again the substitutions seemingly have instant results and a square ball across the edge of the penalty area from Nnadi is soon expertly stroked into the Angers goal beyond Lopes by Amine Harit to make the score 4-2 to OM. A minute later and the score is 5-2 as a lobbed ball forward from Egan-Riley is headed back by Weah and drops to Paixao who strokes the ball into the net in a similar manner to Amine Harit but from about five metres nearer to the goal.
It doesn’t seem likely that Angers will make any sort of comeback now although OM have often shown themselves to be more than capable of snatching defeat from the jaws of victory in the past. Both teams eke out the remaining five or six minutes or normal time with more substitutions and another six minutes of added-on time are added on too, but with a steady rain now falling the score remains unaltered.
With the final whistle the OM players go over to their ecstatic ultras to share a rare success and milk the moment in the likely knowledge that disappointment and frustration are never far away. It’s been an entertaining game in terms of the number of goal scored and OM games are always fun if only for the presence of their fans who Paulene as a Pompey fan considers she has a strong affinity with. Happy therefore, Paulene and I steal away into the deepening gloom of the damp October evening and walk back up rue Volney and rue Paul Bert to the tram stop and the ride back to our hotel. Tomorrow we return home.
