On paper, there was only one winner.
Paris Saint-Germain vs Nice. A Champions League-winning, treble-securing former Barcelona and Spain boss going up a 34-year-old who, when Luis Enrique’s Blaugrana team were swatting aside all before them both at home and abroad, was still earning a living as part of the Qatar U17 set-up.
But as Francesco Farioli’s side ripped into Enrique’s PSG – Nice celebrating their first win at the Parc des Princes since 2009 – one of the most exciting young tactical minds in European football showed that the old master Enrique was not too long in the tooth to be taught a lesson.
According to The Athletic, Rangers held talks with the then-33-year-old Italian before handing the reigns over to Mick Beale nearly 12 months ago. Farioli, at the time, was fresh off a fifth-place finish in the Turkish Super Lig with Alanyaspor – their best ever placing in the top-flight – while instilling a brand of pretty, possession-heavy football befitting his idols Pep Guardiola, Mikel Arteta and Marcelo Bielsa.
But if one-admittedly excellent season in Turkey was not sufficient to convince the cynics that Farioli – nearly a decade younger than recently-retired Allan McGregor – was ready for a club of Rangers’ size and stature, then the nature of Nice’s shellacking of Paris Saint-Germain felt like bit of a ‘coming of age’ moment for the one-time Sassuolo goalkeeping coach.
A ‘welcome to the mainstream’ for a hipster’s darling.
Rangers held talks with Nice caoch Francesco Farioli
“For me, the things that’s made me most proud has been the spirit,” Farioli beamed after that Terem Moffi-inspired victory over the Ligue 1 champions. “I saw one team of warriors with the ball, (and) without the ball.
“We try to do our thing, to propose our ideas. But really the thing that has made me more happy than all the tactical aspects has been the spirit. I think we start to believe more every day in what we are doing with the ball and without.”
It is to Farioli’s credit that Nice – a team who have often underwhelmed despite heavy investment from Sir Jim Ratcliffe – now appear to be playing with a ‘spirit’, a fire and a mentality some of his vastly-more experienced predecessors struggled to instil in an expensively-assembled squad.
Nice chasing Champions League
Now up to fourth in the table, Nice are one of only four unbeaten teams in the division, even if Farioli’s desire to dominate the game and asphyxiate the opposition is yet to really come to fruition.
If Los Aiglons can make statement wins like the one over PSG a regular occurrence, meanwhile, some sections of the Rangers support may be left fearing they have missed the boat. One potential Beale successor – the 43-year-old remains under pressure – moving out of reach.
But Rangers still deserve credit for beating the curve and identifying Farioli at a time when all but a few Turkish football fanatics knew of his work. They knew Farioli before he was cool. Before he was beating the Kings of France in their own throne room.
If Beale does pay with his job somewhere down the line, at least those making the decisions at Ibrox these days appear to have their fingers on the proverbial pulse.
