Paris (AFP)
The only Champions League teams not to have been able to complete their national championship during the summer, Paris SG and Olympique Lyonnais arrive in Lisbon fresher than their rivals, but deprived of pace in competition. More a "handicap" than a chance, they say.
For the first time since 2015 (Monaco and PSG), French football has two representatives in the Champions League quarterfinals. But Ligue 1 being the only major league to have ended its season early because of the coronavirus pandemic, in what physical condition will these two teams appear?
Marquinhos, Thiago Silva, Mauro Icardi and Layvin Kurzawa who come out as a precaution in the League Cup final, Marco Verratti and Kylian Mbappé who come to fill the infirmary ... At PSG, the resumption of competition rhymes with physical glitches.
A curse that falls badly, a few days away from facing Atalanta Bergamo on Wednesday in Lisbon, also deprived of a few executives including Josip Ilicic, his top scorer, but much more in the rhythm of the high level than his Parisian opponent because it has finished Serie A throughout the month of July.
Meanwhile, PSG, deprived of any official match for more than four months, alternated between physical preparation, friendly matches and the finals of the two national cups. A program certainly calibrated to ramp up in view of this great European meeting, but certainly not comparable to the intensity of a final sprint of a domestic championship.
- "Broken in the rhythm" -
"We play a quarter-final of the Champions League, not a friendly match", thundered coach Thomas Tuchel last Wednesday after a final trial run against Sochaux (1-0). As if to underline the big gap that his men are preparing to make in the Portuguese capital.
Sporting director Leonardo, without however looking for an "excuse", even invited journalists on Wednesday evening to raise this supposed lack of fairness in relation to Spanish, German, English and Italian clubs, whose season resumed in May or June, unlike Ligue 1, which was definitively stopped in mid-March.
"We were broken in the rhythm," regretted the Brazilian. "We are not putting the French teams in the best conditions for the Champions League."
Lyon's physical trainer Paolo Rongoni had made the same analysis a few days earlier: "We will not play on equal terms. We are not giving us all our chances and that is what is most frustrating," he said. .
For Leonardo, the reproach also targets the authorities of French football: the president of the Federation Noël Le Graët - "The Coupe de France, we may have played it to please the president" - and the League, responsible for a curious calendar which starts the 2020-21 Ligue 1 season "on the same day as the Champions League final" (August 23).
Little present in the media during the entire confinement sequence, the Parisian club is here behind the position agitated by OL and its president Jean-Michel Aulas for long weeks.
- Freshness -
Aulas, whose club was deprived of qualification for the European Cup by the decision to definitively interrupt Ligue 1, had made this argument a battle horse, denouncing "an injustice" and a "major handicap of not being able to stand to prepare".
Former physical trainer from Rennes, Saint-Etienne and Nice, Nicolas Dyon cautiously abounds. "I prefer a player in competition mode than another in preparation mode. The body, muscles and brain register the intensities of competitions and it takes some time to reprogram them", he analyzes with AFP .
For its part, UEFA has not taken a position on the subject. "This season is very special, it will end differently, so it's very hard to see exactly what can be an advantage or a disadvantage," said Aleksander Ceferin, chairman of the body.
Some would almost see this long break as a significant advantage for the French clubs, who have had a longer preparation period than for a "normal" season.
For Nicolas Dyon, this especially benefits the internationals, who have never had so much time. "They were able to benefit from an extremely rare cut in the life of a footballer, which could allow them to oxygenate themselves before the + money time +", estimates the physical trainer. Enough to compete in Lisbon?
© 2020 AFP