The French football season has been ended after the country’s government announced that no large sporting events will be allowed to take place until at least September, even if they are behind closed doors.
The verdict means that the top two flights of French domestic football will not be able to complete their remaining fixtures, while the French Cup final between St. Etienne and Paris Saint-Germain will not be played.
Ligue 1 becomes the first of Europe’s top five leagues to be cancelled because of the pandemic. PSG are currently 12 points clear at the top of the table with 11 games left to play, one more than second-placed Marseille. Toulouse sit bottom, 13 points adrift of safety, with Amiens and Nimes also in the relegation zone, though the latter are only three points behind St. Etienne and Dijon.
No decision has yet been taken over the awarding of titles or promotions and relegations, with reports in France suggesting that the Ligue de Football Professionnel will meet next month to decide the outcomes.
The same goes for European qualification, with Uefa announcing last week that individual leagues will be allowed to decide on a system based on ‘sporting merit’ to allocate teams to next year’s Champions League and Europa League in the event of seasons finishing incomplete.
It remains to be seen what the decision means for both PSG and Lyon, who are still in this season’s Champions League. The former have already reached the quarter-finals after seeing off Borussia Dortmund in the last-16, while the latter have every chance of joining them, having won the first leg of their own last-16 tie against Juventus before the shutdown kicked in.
More than 23,000 people have been confirmed to have died after being infected with coronavirus in France, making it one of the world’s worst-hit nations.
