Pantaloni's first game at Nice is against his old club, in an empty stadium, and it ends 0-0

The Allianz Riviera was empty. Nice are serving a closed-doors sanction handed down after crowd incidents against Metz in May — the same punishment they played the relegation play-off under — so Olivier Pantaloni's first competitive match in charge happened in silence.

It was also against Lorient, the club he used to work at, now under Alexandre Dujeux. Two new eras, one goalless draw.

Lorient had the chances, Nice had the ball

Lorient were the better side for the first half-hour. Mamadou Koné, unmarked six yards out, got nothing on Gabin Bernardeau's cross — the sort of miss that decides an opening weekend.

Nice finished with 60% possession, 549 accurate passes and exactly one shot on target. ESPN logged four big chances for Lorient and none at all for the hosts. Sixty per cent of the ball and nothing to show for it is a recognisable problem, and it is now Pantaloni's.

Match facts

• No goals — the only goalless first half and full match of the day alongside Troyes v Paris FC
• Played behind closed doors: Nice sanction after the Metz crowd incidents in May
• First competitive match for Olivier Pantaloni at Nice and Alexandre Dujeux at Lorient

Same start, different roads since

That single point turned out to set both clubs on nearly identical trajectories, just running in opposite directions week to week. Nice lost 0-3 at Paris FC on matchday 2, drew 1-1 at home to Le Mans on matchday 3, lost 0-1 away at Auxerre on matchday 4, then finally broke through with a 2-1 win over Lille at the Allianz Riviera on matchday 5 — their first goals scored in more than one match all season, and their first three points. Across the four rounds between this draw and that breakthrough, Pantaloni's side had scored only once in total — the goalless opener against Lorient was not an outlier, it was the pattern for a month.

Lorient's five rounds read almost like a mirror image, just shuffled: a 1-2 home defeat to Troyes on matchday 2, a 1-0 win away at Lens on matchday 3, a 2-2 home draw with Toulouse on matchday 4, and a 1-2 defeat away at Le Mans on matchday 5. Both clubs ended up with the exact same record from their first five matches — one win, two draws, two losses — despite never facing each other again after this opening weekend.

What the closed-doors draw set up

Five matchdays on, the two sides that shared a goalless afternoon in an empty Allianz Riviera sit five points apart from safety but only two places apart from each other: Lorient 12th on 5 points, Nice 14th also on 5 points, split by goal difference — Lorient's 5 scored and 6 conceded (-1) against Nice's 3 scored and 6 conceded (-3). Neither is anywhere near the relegation play-off place, held by Troyes in 16th on 4 points, but neither has pulled away from that zone either. Pantaloni's side has now found the win that eluded it on his opening day in charge; Dujeux's Lorient is still chasing its second.

What's next

A point each, and for Nice a first home crowd still to come. Matchday 2 next weekend is where both of these projects start being judged on something other than novelty.