A new small tripodal ligand L2 has been synthetized and used for lanthanide complexation in acetonitrile. This podand has a short distance between the carbon anchor and the binding sites, but this structural motif still leads to the formation of stable tripodal mononuclear complexes. Indeed, the crystal structure of a C 3-symmetrical mononuclear complex with Eu III shows a helical wrapping of binding strands around the cation. Similar tripodal complexes are formed with L2 along the Ln III series. The selected ones were characterized with different techniques including NMR, mass spectrometry and spectroscopy. As shown with spectrophotometric and NMR titrations, the LnL2 complexes are moderately stable (log β~7) but remain unchanged in large metal excess. In addition, luminescence lifetimes confirm the complexation of trivalent lanthanide in a single well-protected coordination environment.