Was France right before the others by ending its professional football championship? Jean-Michel Aulas is convinced that it is not. While in Germany the Bundesliga must resume on Saturday May 16, despite several cases of positive players at Covid-19, and the prolongation of the confinement in Great Britain postpones a return to the Premier League, the president of Olympique Lyonnais is at war with the government’s April 28 decision.
"Only Belgium, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, Gibraltar and France have taken the decision to stop. Some countries have had situations as important as in France and sometimes more exacerbated than here. However, they find solutions, he said on May 8 on the L’Equipe channel.
Faced with a comparable health situation, the French government has, of authority, whistled the end of the Ligue 1 season, when the English, Italian, Spanish and German leaders are still open to the resumption of football. The decision, made at the top of the state when the clubs expected to be able to replay behind closed doors in June, echoed the words of the Minister of Sports, Roxana Maracineanu, for whom the sport would not be "Priority in our society" over the next few months.
In England, "the resumption of the matches would raise the morale of the nation"
France is the reigning world champion, but the episode reminds us that it is not a football country. "If the situation has changed a bit in the last thirty years, football is much less important than in our four big neighbors, namely England, Spain, Italy and Germany", says Dominique Courdier, associate director of News Tank football, an information and strategic watch agency for football managers in France.
British Foreign Minister Dominic Raab said on May 5 that "Resumption of matches would lift the nation's morale" and put sport, as a hobby, on the same level as going back to work and school. For England, the Premier League, by far the most widely distributed championship in the world, is also an element of soft power – just like James Bond or the Beatles in the past.
Across the Rhine, the return of the Bundesliga enjoys a fairly broad consensus in the political class and between Länder. "A weekend with football is much more bearable than a weekend without football", argues the Minister-President of Bavaria, Markus Söder.
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