No regrets for the French government. Invited to comment on the resumption of professional football in Germany, last weekend, the French Minister of Sports Roxana Maracineanu estimated that across the Rhine "economic considerations" had "taken precedence" over health issues.

Faced with the coronavirus pandemic, "it was important for me to give primacy to the health aspect and the psychological well-being of athletes over economic considerations, which, indeed, in other countries, have taken precedence ", regretted the Minister of Sports, visiting the Insep for the return of certain athletes to the high performance institute.

If the season of Ligue 1 football has been stopped definitively in France, crowning the PSG champion, the Bundesliga resumed on Saturday, without public and with strict health protocols.

Not the same issues

"Each country has been affected in a different way" by the Covid-19, recalls Roxana Maracineanu. And to point out the federal system in place in Germany, where it is "the regions which make their own decisions, whether for the reopening of school or the resumption of sport".

If "the stakes are not the same in Germany and in France", the minister questioned "the notion of equity" in the event of resumption of European competitions, in the first place the Champions League, where PSG and Lyon are still in the running.

"It is true that this notion of fairness is at stake, there are some who have made the choice to resume their championships, because, no doubt, and I know it for having discussed it with my counterparts from the big European countries football, economic issues were at stake, "she insisted.

The same treatment for all

"I think that in the period we are living in, a decision which was guided by concern for health and the health aspect cannot be called into question," she added, stressing " all the measures announced for sport (which) apply to the smallest of associations (...) as well as to professional sport "in France.

The judgment of Ligue 1 has provoked an outcry among some football players, with in the front line the Lyon president Jean-Michel Aulas, who has filed two appeals before the administrative court concerning the early cessation of the championship.

The break imposed by the coronavirus crisis "could have been more beneficial" for professional sport, said the minister, according to whom "we could have taken advantage of this moment to ask other questions, than simply ' am I 1st, 2nd, 3rd '".

With AFP

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