Matchday 20 review

A season-high seven penalties were awarded – and subsequently scored – over the eight matches of Matchday 20, making it the busiest day of the season for the officials in that regard. Some matches involved two spot-kicks (Jeunesse Esch scored two of them against Käerjéng, Marisca Mersch and Mondercange scored one each in their encounter), but no clash could have been described as being single-handedly decided by penalty decisions.

The referees were also largely right and consistent in their decisions about when to blow for a penalty in crucial situations, and no clubs could feel particularly hard done by the officiating, which is a welcome improvement from some of the past weeks’ cases that left club staffs in anger and disbelief.

Does home advantage matter?

The prospect of home advantage in football has generally been fading in modern times, as the differences between pitch conditions are now negligible across a division’s teams, and distances can be covered in a much shorter timeframe than in older times (naturally in Luxembourg, it hadn’t been specifically problematic, anyway).

Those claiming the impact of fans and the atmosphere they generate pitchside can vastly influence a team’s performances might find reassurance in the fact all eight games in the BGL Ligue were won by the home team. The hosts racked up 21 goals combined (almost three each on average), while the visitors were restricted to a meagre 5 goals scored (one of them a penalty).

Similarly to the penalty statistic referred above, this is the first time all home teams could use their advantage to gain the three points this season. That being said, the difference in clubs’ home and away records has been apparent throughout the course of the campaign, with Differdange and Dudelange achieving eight wins and a solitary draw in front of their own fans so far, while Niederkorn are also unbeaten at the Stade Jos Haupert so far, achieving eight victories besides two draws.

Some of Sunday’s winners were obviously tipped to win their respective match-ups regardless of which ground the game would be played upon. Nobody questioned F91 Dudelange or Differdange outscoring mid-table teams or Swift Hesper confidently putting rock-bottom Fola Esch away. In other cases, the outcome was rather surprising. Progrès Niederkorn suffered their first loss in six games, and their first in Rosport since a behind-closed-doors meeting in 2020, in the surreal world of COVID-restrictions.

Newly-promoted Schifflange ’95 were able to get their first win since the arrival of Morocco international star Nabil Dirar, confidently tearing apart an inconsistent, hesitant Racing Union Luxembourg by a final score of 4-1, in one of the bigger surprises from last week. Marisca Mersch, finishing just behind Schifflange in the second division last year, were also able to get back to winning ways after an inexcusable loss to Fola Esch by beating FC Mondercange (a team also experiencing their fair share of adversity), courtesy of a late penalty by league top scorer Benny Bresch.

If we are looking for the most likely explanations for such a high share of home wins, the number of fans is the first statistic worth analysing. According to Transfermarkt, the average attendance of the season so far is 438, up from last season’s 401 and on a constant upward curve in the past five years. The last time there have been higher crowd numbers was in 2018/19, before the pandemic-enforced lockdowns prevented fans from attending games in large numbers.

Whether an increase of a few dozen fans at each game weighs anything into a team’s performance on the pitch cannot scientifically be proven, but the three teams with the highest attendances (Jeunesse Esch, Differdange and Niederkorn) are all in the top 5 on the table, too, and are historically considered some of the most successful clubs in the country.

Although the number of spectators hardly resembles professional leagues, the most passionate fans present at all games will no doubt serve as motivation for the players to go the extra mile. The constant increase in average fan numbers is another promising sight, and results like the latest ones will continue to show just how vital supporters are for their team’s fortunes.

Mondercange in a world of trouble

The last week of February was the first time this season when FC Mondercange slipped into the relegation zone, but it had been on the cards for a while. Actually, that is an understatement.

The team in question have not won a single game in the league since 3 September (matchday 5). In October, they beat two lower-league opponents in the Luxembourgish Cup to proceed to the Round of 16 (to be played in April), but have had no such luck against teams in their own division. A managerial change in the winter has hardly helped either, since the team are on zero points in three games with the new head coach, Sébastien Mazurier, at the helm.

The latest match was one they simply had to win to gain an upper hand on some of their relegation rivals at least, but instead, it was Marisca Mersch who managed to widen the gap between the two teams, escaping to the lower mid-table area of the table. Mondercange are only one point above Fola Esch, both teams situated in the automatic relegation zone.

Some of the blame has to be laid on the players. This team do not look particularly strong in anything, but it is not entirely a tactical, systematic deficiency, and they shouldn’t be this leaky at the back and impotent up front.

According to Wyscout data, the club are seriously underperforming their expected metrics. Despite producing more expected goals (xG – a metric that conjures up each shot’s possibility of being scored, taking into account a number of different factors based on past precedent) than 5th-placed Jeunesse Esch, yet ended up scoring 12 goals less – only UNA Strassen have underachieved more than FCM’s 21 goals from 24.71xG.

At the other end of the pitch, the story is generally similar, albeit much more extreme: from 30.44 expected goals against the team, they have managed to concede 43 times – the biggest underperformance of any team in the league. Individual performances played a part – that’s one of the reasons why two goalkeepers, Seydou Sy and Manuel Nazaretian, arrived mid-season to bolster the manager’s options.

All of the above is not to say Mazurier and predecessor Samy Smaïli are not at fault, though. While the team definitely performs below their best, it is by no means a team with strong tactical blueprint or a clear identity. The foundations laid out had never been strong in the first place, and while a bit of luck could help shape this team into a weak mid-table contender outfit, that is still far from their pre-season ambitions after a raft of reinforcements were brought to the playing squad from abroad, mostly France and Germany.

There are ten league matches to be played for each club in the 2023/24 season. If Mondercange fail to register three points against Schifflange next week, it will have been over 200 days since their last win. The clock is ticking, the teams around them are all responding to their wake-up calls, but Mondercange continue to stagnate. If they are intent on extending their two-year stay in the BGL Ligue, they must improve – and improve now.

Around the pitches

UNA Strassen posed no direct threat to Differdange’s defence, who calmly kept a third clean sheet in a row. FCD are still unbeaten at the top of the table, and will face F91 Dudelange at home before the international break – a game between the top two teams on the table, which can quite feasibly put a premature end to the title race soon.

Union Titus Pétange were the first winners of the weekend, beating Wiltz 71 at Saturdays’s only game, the only goal scored by Kyrgyzstan international Kai Merk. Wiltz are now winless in eight games, which is the second worst streak behind Mondercange’s above-mentioned 15-game series. The team from the Ardennes are only out of the relegation zone thanks to their superior goal difference on Schifflange…

…which is prone to change anytime, given Schifflange’s latest signs of coming to life against Racing Union. A 4-1 win inspired by a brace from Benjamin Bešić fires Schifflange back in the race for survival. They are facing a trip to a struggling Mondercange next Sunday, where another win would gain them a lot of breathing space for the next few weeks.

F91 Dudelange continued their high-scoring patch. They have now found the net 15 times in their 5 games since the winter restart, and Samir Hadji’s brace was sufficient for the three points against Mondorf this time. The Moroccan scored one goal from open play, and another one from penalty to break the hearts of the Angry Goats’ faithful.

Jeunesse Esch were on the lucky end of two penalty decisions in their clash against UN Käerjéng, but winter arrival Armando Mendes Jr made sure to add a third goal for good measure. Jeunesse look like a team transformed from the first half of the season, already going from 15th place to 5th in the space of one month! Käerjéng continue to be involved in the relegation scrap.

Swift Hesper ran away with the three points against an in-form Fola Esch, but the scoreline doesn’t do the Eschers justice. Their 18-year old midfielder Tim Flick equalised in the second half from a breathtaking direct free-kick hit, only for Hesper’s superior attacking weapons to come to the fore. Dominik Stolz and Dejvid Sinani provided the difference, extending Swift’s unbeaten run to eight games now under manager Roland Vrabec.

Victoria Rosport kept the three points at the PartyRent Arena against a Niederkorn side who looked far less ruthless this time around than in the four encounters before this. Walid Jarmouni continues producing goals at a steady rate for the Wasps, but this time it wasn’t enough to outscore Martin Forkel’s Victoria side, who are on course for their best league position since 2005/06, when they finished third.

As always, the games’ live commentaries, highlights and full video footage are all available on RTL.lu’s Live Arena hub.