Sports Minister Roxana Maracineanu irritated the professional sports world on April 22, recalling that he was not "Not a priority today in the decisions which are taken by the government". You have to believe that the minister knew, better than her detractors, the state of mind of the executive. Tuesday, April 28, Edouard Philippe, with a dry sentence, put an end to the long brainstorming of a hard-pressed professional football, who was burning to find the fields in June: "The 2019-2020 professional sports season, especially the soccer season, will not be able to resume either."
The question of whether to end the football season permanently – a historic first – has therefore reached the top of the state. The Elysée and Matignon have deemed it necessary "To send explicitly the signal that it was necessary to make simple", they say at the sports ministry. Keep it simple, the reverse of what French football had been building for weeks, like its neighbors, wanting to end the season, using complex health protocols and batteries of tests. There are two reasons for this eagerness: to urge television broadcasters to pay the last installments of the contract binding them to the Professional Football League (LFP) and to obey the injunction of UEFA, the governing body of football in Europe, to finish the championships during the summer.
Persistent cacophony
Edouard Philippe’s statement ended the hopes of the clubs, not quite the cacophony. The sports ministry leaves open the possibility of resuming competition in August with, "If the pandemic does not progress any more, small gauges of spectators, less than 5,000 people".
The Football League left until Thursday to decide. While specifying, in a press release, that its board of directors "Will have to formally decide to stop the 2019-2020 season".
Warned Monday of the government decision, the president of the French Football Federation (FFF), Noël Le Graët, in a daily interview The Telegram Tuesday evening declared "Definitively arrested" the first three men's divisions and the women's championship. He insisted in passing that the resumption match, in August, would be the final of his flagship competition, the Coupe de France, between Paris-Saint-Germain and Saint-Etienne.
Finally, continuing to act as a free electron, Jean-Michel Aulas, president of Olympique lyonnais (OL), pleaded before Roxana Maracineanu, then in an interview with Agence France-Presse, for a resumption of the season in August.
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