Lucio Leonardo Benamer writes about Ligue 1, which has a history of underperforming compared to its sibling leagues
Ligue 1, what should be one of Europe’s premier soccer/football leagues, is often ignored. Despite its home nation France having a spectacular track record internationally, its domestic league has been struggling within Europe for the past three decades. The league has been in trouble for a variety of reasons. Poor spending habits within the league have caused hardship between clubs. For the past 30 years not a single French club has won a major European competition, severely diminishing the leagues past prestige in the process. If nobody wins in your entire league for over 30 years, people are bound to lose faith in it. When the country hosting your league has won the FIFA World Cup twice, expectations are set to the absolute highest for your league. Ligue 1 is also struggling to sell broadcasting rights to its games, with a variety of networks rejecting their offer.
Although French clubs have been consistently qualifying for the annual UEFA Champions League, not a single one has won it for the past 30 years. Ever since Marseille’s victory in the first edition of the UEFA Champions League in 1992, no other Ligue 1 club has triumphed. This has caused Ligue 1 to be referred to as a “Farmers League,” a league without competitiveness or quality within its teams. Due to how well the French national team performs on the world stage, it is laughable that Ligue 1 is considered to be one of the weakest leagues in Europe. In fact, out of the “Big Five” leagues in Europe (Germany, England, Italy, France, Spain) France’s league is considered to be the weakest. People are now questioning if France should be included within the “Big Five” at all due to their decades of underperforming within the continent.
Ligue 1’s de facto flagship club Paris-Saint-Germain FC, has long been the dominating force within the French league. Paris-Saint-Germain has been getting first or second place in every season of Ligue 1 since 2012. Despite qualifying for the UEFA Champions League every single year, the team has not managed to win the league a single time. Although Paris-Saint-Germain was bought out by the Emir of Qatar nearly a decade ago, no amount of money managed to win Paris-Saint-Germain any success. 12 years of ownership and 1.4 billion euros (or about 1.5 Billion USD) spent on the club has had 0 results. Despite signing world class players of the likes of Neymar Jr. Kylian Mbappe, and at one point 2022 World Cup winner Lionel Messi, none of them have managed to bring PSG to any major European success.
Ligue 1 issues also come from how its broadcasting rights are struggling to stay afloat. Having the same club winning almost every year, only to flounder in European competition doesn’t make people want to watch your league. It appears higher ups within the league beg to differ. Current Ligue 1 president Vincent Labrune is demanding a hefty 800 million euros in exchange for broadcasting rights for Ligue 1 matches. Ligue 1 has already had a rocky history with broadcasting rights, with this price being absurd compared to Qatar’s BeIN Sports 90 million euro offer back in 2012. It appears Labrune wants to secure a bag of cash through no effort of improving his league. Sadly and unsurprisingly to Labrune’s dismay, not a single entity took him up on his offer.
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