And good luck to the person in charge of "pdf" at the LFP. While the League seemed to have roughly stalled in broad outline its post-coronavirus season, the Council of State has just screwed up asking it to see the feasibility of an L1 at 22 clubs, in a scenario where Amiens and Toulouse escape relegation for the moment. "We are asked to reconsider this decision, we will reconsider it, but that does not necessarily mean that we will play at 22, explained the DG of the League Didier Quillot Tuesday evening on RMC. We will try to do everything in good order. First, the format, the participants in the competitions and then the final calendar for the 2020-21 season. To help him a little, as well as the pdf clerk - to whom, we really give our full support - 20 Minutes tried to see if we could play at 22.
The preamble
Beginning of the season: If, in the original calendar of the 2020-21 season, the first day of Ligue 1 took place on Saturday August 8, the health crisis prompted the LFP to fix a recovery for the 23 of the same month. What Didier Quillot confirmed Tuesday evening "our objective has not changed, it remains to start the 2020-2021 season on the weekend of August 22-23". In addition to adding four games to its calendar, Ligue 1 thus loses three weeks of additional competition.
End of season: Due to the presence of the Euro, which begins on June 11, the end of season date is non-negotiable. The last day of Ligue 1 must take place on May 23 to allow the French team to have time to prepare. We also start from the premise that the Ligue 1 / Ligue 2 barrages must in any case be canceled and that the promotion relegation system will be very different next year (4 relegated for 2 promoted?).
The “ranges” of matches available
If the season starts on August 23 and ends on May 23, there will therefore be exactly 78 match ranges available, at a rate of two per week. For how many matches? Here is the calculation:
- 42 days of Ligue 1
- 5 Coupe de France beaches
- 4 international beaches, which last 10 days each time (and therefore cover three match ranges) which one can hardly do without a year of Euro = 12 match ranges
- 3 beaches for the December truce
- 14 European match ranges (6 group matches, 8 group stage matches, the final scheduled for May 30)
A total of 76 "match ranges" filled out of the 78 mathematically available.
The findings
Said like that, the calendar therefore seems mathematically playable. In reality, it is not. First, because you don't have to have a doctorate in quantum physics to understand that playing every three days for eight months is not a humanly sustainable rhythm. We must expect a massacre of injuries, internationals arriving on the kneecaps at the Euro, French clubs without juice in the European Cup.
By way of comparison, there were nine weeks scheduled without a match in the initial calendar on Tuesdays / Wednesdays, allowing the clubs to blow the players away. There would, de facto, only two with a League 1 to 22. Clearly, it would play Saturday-Wednesday-Saturday from August 23 to May 23. Untenable, and "likely to pose a risk to the health and physical integrity of the players by imposing on them a calendar of an unprecedented rate," already explained the Executive Committee of the FFF at the end of May.
Second, because such a calendar leaves almost no room for maneuver for the “unexpected”. What if a match or a day is postponed due to bad weather? What if PSG (or Lyon, let's be crazy) wins the Champions League and has to stuff the Club World Cup? A calendar, as busy as it is, needs breaths to be able to prepare for these eventualities.
Finally, and this is not the least important point: what will Mediapro, who spent a fortune on TV rights for Ligue 1, say if half of the days of its new jewel are in weeks, where the audience is weaker?
The solutions
They are not numerous, and we can already thank the Coupe de la Ligue for no longer existing, freeing up a few slots in the calendar at the start of calendar year 2021. But here are a few ideas to hope we can get there.
- Start the season earlier: it was already in the plans with the postponement to the end of July or the beginning of the month of the unfinished Cup finals of this end of the season. Rather than starting again on the 23rd, why not start on August 9th, as the original calendar provided? If the sanitary situation allows, it would be the simplest solution to free up some dates.
- Shorten international dates: a far from obvious and rather wobbly hypothesis, since international dates are decided by Fifa. French football could arrange to play the two games planned by beach in a shorter time to free the third, but for the good of the French team and football, it is not really desirable to shorten the rallies at Clairefontaine. And technically very complicated.
- Abandon the winter break: What if we were going to a boxing day in France? It would be another way to potentially play three games on currently blank dates. The problem in this scenario is still the health of the players. In an already overloaded calendar, is it reasonable to cut the only two weeks of rest for our players? Unlike English clubs, few French clubs have the staff to allow their players to turn from one day to the next.
- Bet on early eliminations in the European Cup: This is the least patriotic solution, but if there is no longer any French club to start, say, quarterfinals of the European Cup, that frees immediately four dates in the calendar. The problem is that it is difficult to draw a calendar hoping for the failure of our football. Especially since the performances of Lyon and PSG this year prove that quarters are quite within reach.
And finally ? No quick fix, except maybe a mix of all of these. Win a few days by starting the season earlier in August, shorten the holidays by a week, scrape off a possible international date (September is probably the least important in the current context) and imagine that we could play in France on the European Cup semi-finals. Come on, good luck to the LFP. And to the person behind the pdf.
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