PSG success barely covers up French football’s woes

PARIS: Paris Saint-Germain´s progress to the Champions League final should be a cause for French football to celebrate but their achievement hardly disguises the fact that the game in the country is in crisis as the Ligue 1 season ended this weekend.

PSG had already wrapped up a fourth consecutive domestic title long before the French campaign concluded, and Luis Enrique´s team can also add the French Cup next Saturday. That will be followed by the Champions League showdown against Inter Milan on May 31, as PSG aim to finally get their hands on the trophy they covet most.

France have won the World Cup twice and reached two more finals in the last seven editions. But French clubs have made a habit of underachieving in continental competitions, meaning PSG can become just the second club from the country ever to win European football´s biggest prize, after Marseille in 1993.

Put another way, France has still won as many European Cups as Scotland and Romania, or one fewer than Nottingham Forest. Little wonder, then, that the French footballing community seems united in getting behind PSG in the final, despite the impossibility for rival sides of challenging the Qatar-backed club domestically.

“We are lucky to have a French team in the final,” said Nice coach Franck Haise. “I am not a Paris supporter. My club is Nice, but I am eager to see Paris win the final. I am French, as I was when Marseille won in 1993.”

Marseille, Monaco and Lyon have at least all got to European semi-finals in recent years and should aspire to regularly compete at that level. Yet the currently plight of Lyon, seven times French champions, is worrying.

Eagle Football, the company controlled by American businessman John Textor and which owns Lyon, recently reported debts of 540 million euros ($603m). That has raised doubts as to Lyon´s ability to remain a going concern, all the more so after their failure to qualify for next season´s Champions League.

Lyon were recenty warned that they would be demoted to Ligue 2 if drastic action was not taken to reduce their debts. Sports daily L´Equipe also reported that the club must accept sanctions from UEFA in order to be allowed into Europe at all next season.

At least Marseille and Monaco know they will be in the Champions League along with PSG. Any French club unable to take a share of the riches on offer in Europe faces a challenging future because of uncertainty surrounding Ligue 1´s domestic TV deal.

A last-minute agreement for this season with streaming platform DAZN promised Ligue 1 clubs just 400 million euros a year to show the majority of matches per weekend.

Adding in other deals, including with international broadcasters, the French league (LFP) was still far short of its stated ambition of bringing in one billion euros ($1.115 billion) annually from TV. As a result, Ligue 1´s current TV deal is down on its previous contract, leaving France trailing even further behind Europe´s biggest leagues -- the Premier League´s upcoming domestic rights deal for the next four years is valued at 2.02 billion euros per season.

What´s more, the deal with DAZN is now expected to be broken early, with the French league instead looking to create its own channel to broadcast matches.

And so in the short to medium term clubs can have no guarantees as to how much income they will receive from television. That can only make life harder for most, and the huge gulf between PSG and the rest may only grow larger.

“PSG have invested a lot of money and are years ahead of us in so many respects but our ambition is still to be able to compete with them,” insisted Marseille coach Roberto De Zerbi. However, the Parisians are about to go to the Club World Cup in the USA, where the prize money on offer will see the winners receiving up to $125 million. Perhaps all PSG´s rivals can hope for is that Luis Enrique´s team come back from that tournament so exhausted that the playing field opens up a little next season.