Marcelo Bielsa bests Claudio Ranieri in Ligue 1's opening weekend battle of the star coaches

Two big name coaches in Bielsa and Ranieri made their respective bows with Lille and Nantes, when the clubs went head-to-head on the opening weekend of the French league

Nantes is Ranieri's first job since he was sacked by Leicester (Getty)

This will always be remembered as the weekend that Neymar arrived in Ligue 1, presented to an ecstatic Parc des Princes on the occasion of a modest victory over newly-promoted Amiens.

Yet it won’t really change the destination of the domestic season, with last year’s winners Monaco struggling to keep the lid on an exodus that probably isn’t over yet. The Brazilian’s wit and dazzle are expected to eventually unlock the Champions League for PSG but in Ligue 1, his inclusion will be like using a sledgehammer to crack a nut.

Yet if – internationally at least - it was all about Neymar, there were further sprinkles of stardust an hour north, a day later. It wasn’t so much about the clubs involved as Lille took on Nantes, but about their new leaders.

“The stars put on the bench,” said the Sunday morning headline in L’Equipe, as two big name coaches in Marcelo Bielsa and Claudio Ranieri made their respective bows with their new clubs against each other.

Both have coached in the Hexagon before, of course, with Bielsa moulding a richly entertaining Marseille side which looked like title winners in 2014/15 before folding in the home strait to finish fourth.

Ranieri, meanwhile, dragged a struggling Monaco from the foot of Ligue 2 to promotion and then back into the Champions League before he was unceremoniously dumped; again, conforming to type in aping his experiences at Chelsea.

Ranieri watches his new team in action (Getty)

One could argue that this early-season joust followed the script as well. The body language on the touchline seemed to betray current moods, with Ranieri on his feet, at the very edge of the technical area, prompting from the get-go.

El Loco, meanwhile, stayed firmly sat down, eschewing his position perched on the cool box from his Marseille days – perhaps wary of a repeat of the embarrassing incident when he sat on a coffee left on it by an assistant during a match at the Vélodrome. Then again, perhaps he felt like his meticulous pre-season preparation meant no in-game micromanagement was required.

Those respective demeanours turned out to be a fair reflection of where their new charges are at right now, with Lille running out as 3-0 winners after a goalless first half. Les Dogues may be hitting par for a new Bielsa project, enjoying that first flush of working with a visionary.

Bielsa joined Lille after an ill-fated two-day reign at Lazio (Getty)

Yet while Lille’s new coach has been given exactly the conditions he wants – an influx of mainly South Americans, the freedom to excommunicate the players he doesn’t want from the first-team group, and even changes to pitch sizes at the training ground – Ranieri has a far trickier task ahead of him, as this limp display showed.

Even more so than Leicester after Nigel Pearson went, Nantes have been marked by the departure of previous coach Sérgio Conceição, a man who coaxed a modest group of players to performing a near-miracle. In the space of six months, Conceição took Nantes from second-bottom to seventh.

In the excitement, the former Portugal midfielder signed a new contract to 2020 and Les Canaris looked ahead to a bright new future. Then suddenly, Conceição’s head was turned by an offer from his former club Porto. Just like that, he was gone.

Conceicao walked out on Nantes to join Porto (Getty)

It’s been left to Ranieri to pick up the pieces, with little possibility of riding the positive wave of the previous season’s form as he did at Leicester. The preparation has been far from ideal, with the messy wrangle over Conceição’s exit arrival made worse by Ranieri’s own delays in signing, protracted by the ludicrous and rarely applied rule in French league statutes deeming that no new coaches can be aged 65 or over (this was quickly overturned).

Amine Harit, the team’s only player of genuine flair, was sold to Schalke while key midfielder Guillaume Gillet was on the bench here, with his head seemingly elsewhere after a transfer to Olympiacos failed to materialise – president Waldemar Kita called him out as “not very professional” after Sunday’s game.

Ranieri didn’t sugar-coat his post-match words either. “They were more motivated than us,” he said, “and that’s not good. We can lose but we can’t lack motivation and fight. Today, we lost two matches – in terms of quality and in terms of effort.” He also reiterated his expectation that a number of much-needed new players will arrive.

The former Leicester manager has a tough job on his hands (Getty)

Bielsa also faces a situation where the players at his disposal are not the equals of the talent he inherited at Athletic Bilbao or Marseille, but his enduring qualities, which override any sniffs about a relative lack of trophies, are evident, and Lille are already a side with their coach’s fingerprints all over them – the press, the rapid passing, the shifts of formation.

The way he gets into players’ heads, broadens their horizons and unlocks hidden potential, and how quickly he does it, is a source of genuine wonder.

“It’s a collective strength that’s starting to bed in,” debutant right-back Kevin Malcuit (who admits he came here specifically to work with the Argentinian) told us. “The Bielsa method really works your brain.”

It looks like entertaining us again, too. The excitement is enough that, right now, who cares if there’s a burnout come come spring? Ranieri, hired for his name but who has often struggled to steer a sinking ship to safety, has a job on to make sure he lasts that long.