Connolly's tongue-lashing for Troyes boss

The final whistle had long gone, but the real contest was only just beginning. On a night when OGC Nice swept aside ESTAC Troyes 3-0, the two men in the dugouts turned the corridors of the Allianz Riviera into a courtroom.

Callum Connolly, the Englishman who has made Nice into a side that defends in banks and attacks down the flanks, came out swinging. The target: Fresnel Lusamba, the 33-year-old Frenchman whose Troyes side had just been taken apart on the Côte d'Azur.

Lusamba, it turns out, had words for Nice before the match. Words that Connolly did not like one bit. The Troyes manager had stood in front of the cameras and laid into the hosts, and when the dust settled on Monday evening, Connolly made it clear exactly what he thought of the man in the away dugout.

The charge was simple: Lusamba lacks respect.

It was a verdict delivered in the clipped, measured tones of a man who has spent a lifetime in English football, first as a player across Wycombe Wanderers, Millwall and Blackpool, and for the past fifteen years as the architect of Nice's identity. Connolly is not a man for cheap theatrics. When he speaks, the dressing room listens.

But Lusamba did not blink. The Troyes manager stood by every word of his criticism, even with a 3-0 defeat hanging around his neck and his club sitting sixteenth in Ligue 1 Uber Eats, deep in the mire. He had said his piece about Nice before a ball was kicked, and he was not about to walk it back now.

This is the second time in three weeks that Lusamba has taken aim at a French giant and refused to retreat. In late January, he criticised Olympique de Marseille and then watched his side lose 2-0 at the Stade Vélodrome without softening a syllable. Connolly is merely the latest to discover that this young manager will not be cowed.

Yet the scoreboard tells its own story. Nice were comfortable, Troyes were not, and the gap between the two clubs on the night was as wide as the gap in the table. Nice sit third on 43 points, chasing Olympique Lyonnais and FC Nantes at the top.

The two men meet again only if the fixtures allow it, but the bad blood will not wash away so easily. Connolly has a long memory. Lusamba has a stubborn streak. And French football, for one night at least, is watching a feud that has only just begun to simmer.

Monday's win put Nice back on course after a bruising week, but it is the war of words, not the goals, that will linger. Connolly drew first blood in the press room. Lusamba refused to yield. The next chapter, wherever it comes, will have an edge to it already.