Football Season Guide

A relatively young club, they were founded in 1995 despite existing in some other form since the 1920s, Pau Football Club achieved their first promotion ever to the Ligue 2 last season. They unexpectedly found themselves among the top teams right from the start and, after falling from the top early on in January, eventually regained the leadership in the next-to-last week of the campaign, thus triumphing despite losing their very last game. Pau deserved winning the promotion, having recorded the best attack and the next-to-best defence of the Championnat National, with 43 goals scored and 20 conceded respectively, and having lost just 3 games, 2 of them in home soil. Coach Bruno Irles, the architect of their triumph, decided to quit the club after just 1 season in charge as he was not offered an extension deal for more than 1 campaign. Therefore, Pau decided to hire Didier Tholot in his place: the latter made his name in Switzerland, winning the Coupe de Suisse twice, and is expected to confirm their offensive and proactive style of football. Over the summer, Pau lost at least 1 protagonist of the promotion for each department as Guendouz, Name and, above all, Gueye and Sabaly, the two wingers capable of 24 goals and 13 assists altogether, all left, mainly due to the end of their loan deals, but managed to maintain the backbone of the squad. In terms of new signings, they mostly tried to add some Ligue 2 experience to the squad: in particular, ageing Scaramozzino should be acting as back-up to Kamissoko at left-back, while Assifuah and Armand are expected to bring some goals in the attack. Lobry in the midfield and Koffi, coming from negative seasons, at right-back could also be given relevant playing time. Coach Tholot is still waiting for new players, a couple of defenders, a midfielder and a forward, so that Pau could be starting the campaign with an incomplete squad.