Paris (AFP)
The speeches fuse, the status quo remains. Shaken Monday by a new call to "give up" the football season interrupted by the pandemic, the French League (LFP) said "to work" on "the best conditions for recovery", despite the lingering shadow of the coronavirus.
Restart the 2019/20 season, really? Several club presidents, like Lyonnais Jean-Michel Aulas or Brestois Denis Le Saint, have already shown their skepticism about a resumption of Ligue 1, suspended since March 13.
But on Monday, the arrow came from the players 'camp, with a tribune signed Sylvain Kastendeuch, the co-president of the French footballers' union (UNFP), in the daily Le Monde.
"The economic emergency must not take precedence over the public health imperative. Let us renounce a resumption of the championship in these conditions (...) which would be hasty and dangerous", wrote the former emblematic defender of FC Metz .
And the former French international added: "Let’s gather today the conditions for a successful and exemplary next season of this football we love so much. Let’s accept the idea of a form of creative destruction, engendered by this crisis. "
- "Health protocol" in preparation -
This leader of the UNFP fears that the conditions of health and physical security to protect the players will not be met while the Football League (LFP) hopes to complete before the end of July the 2019/20 season of L1 and L2.
The LFP is actively working on this hypothesis, with Damocles as its sword the thorny issue of television rights, whose generous revenues are currently suspended by the broadcasters beIN Sports and Canal +. But it remains dependent on the health measures imposed in France, where the Covid-19 has killed nearly 20,000 people according to a last assessment.
The League is "awaiting the terms of deconfinement that the government will announce at the end of April, and in particular the conditions under which the matches could be played behind closed doors," she recalled on Monday, reacting in a statement to the "many speeches" made on the subject.
Its management, she adds, "works" with the Ministries of Sport and the Interior "to study the best conditions for the recovery guaranteeing first of all the health of all the players as well as sports equity and sustainability professional football. "
A "health and medical protocol for resuming training" is currently under study, it is also specified.
- Concerns -
Will this reassuring speech be enough to extinguish the concerns and questions of players, coaches and club employees? Listening to Philippe Piat, the other co-president of the UNFP, it is not won.
In the event of a restart, "can we play the most important matches at the end of the season every three days? Will the means of transport work? Will the hotels be open?" , questions the players' representative to AFP.
Another question: "If we find three cases of infection in a team, what do we do? We put the others in the fortnight? We play with three fewer players?". A club battling relegation could be forced to play "with a decimated team," he said.
For Piat, in short, it is urgent to wait. And the UNFP, contrary to what Kastendeuch's words "suggest", does not want to draw a line under the current season.
"No. We campaign for a stop if the conditions for recovery are not sufficient to respect the health of the players," he said, returning the ball to the thinking heads of the LFP.
The leaders must "tell us how they are going to do it and we will see if the planets are aligned for a recovery", concludes Piat.
© 2020 AFP