Plea against French football season rejected

PARIS: A Paris court on Friday rejected an appeal from relegated French football Ligue 1 clubs Toulouse and Amiens as well as rivals Lyon who claimed the season had wrongly been abandoned last month.

While Toulouse and Amiens were both relegated, Lyon fell short of European qualification when time was called on the campaign due to the coronavirus.

When the LFP, which runs the top two divisions in French football, decided late last month to call an end to the season, there were still 10 of the 38 scheduled rounds of games to play.

That was after the French government ruled out any prospect of matches returning before August. The decision confirmed Paris Saint-Germain as champions and also meant that the bottom two, Amiens and Toulouse, were condemned to Ligue 2. Lorient and Lens have been promoted in their place. The judge of the Paris administrative court “has logically retained...that the decisions taken by the league’s board of directors on April 30 could only be challenged before the Council of State,” said the LFP in a statement on Friday. Lyon insisted they were not pushing so hard for a restart of the season for