Tribune. Today there is a consensus to affirm that French football must reinvent itself. If the national team is doing well, club football is in distress.
Even before the outbreak of Covid-19 and the absurd soap opera [du diffuseur sino-espagnol insolvable] Mediapro, the performances of French clubs in the European Cup were in free fall (with the exception of those of Paris-Saint-Germain doped by Qatari gas manna), the quality of play and TV audiences were down, and the Professional Football League (LFP) looked like a cesspool raining down blows.
The very poor financial situation of the clubs finally gave birth to the idea that we could not continue like this …
Healthy competitive shock
For some, it is necessary to accentuate the mechanisms of solidarity and to establish a salary cap which sports economists are loud in reminding that it is inapplicable in a league open “to the European”. For the others, we must reduce the size of Ligue 1 and grant a larger share of TV rights to the big cars participating in European competitions.
Among those who believe that a reduction in the size of Ligue 1 would produce a salutary competitive shock, there is nonetheless a dividing line between the supporters of a reduction in the number of professional clubs (and a concomitant reduction in the size of Ligue 2) and those who want, on the contrary, the creation of a professional Ligue 3 and the end of brown amateurism.
We can add that there is also a debate on the annual number of promotions and relegations, as well as on the merits of closing the summer transfer window. [époque des transferts de joueurs entre clubs] from the first championship meeting …
There is also a more subliminal divide between those who are supporters of the creation of a European super league (Paris-Saint-Germain on the one hand, Olympique Lyonnais and a few other French leaders, if we deign to invite them to do so. ) and those who would see a guaranteed downgrading (because they will never be invited).
English contempt
This divide illustrates the existence of a “crossroads” for European domestic leagues: Europe is the breeding ground for the greatest talents in the world’s most popular sport, but there is no European “Major League” of football – like the North American Major League – even though the geographical distances between European clubs are smaller than those which separate the franchises of the same conference in the United States and Canada. For a sporting spectacle at the exhibition which has become global, this absence of a European super league appears to be an anachronism.
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