Coupe de France and Coupe de la Ligue finals will now take place on July 24 and 31, after matches were postponed in April due to the coronavirus pandemic.
The Ligue de Football Professionnel (LFP), which runs the top-tier professional football leagues in France, has voted to obtain a 224.5 million-euro loan from the French state to help out its member clubs, especially those in the elite Ligue 1 division. But even despite this help some clubs are on the brink of going into administration. Mediapart can reveal confidential documents which show the risky nature of the loan arrangement, which the state agreed to without making any solvency checks. As Laurent Mauduit writes, there is a risk that French taxpayers could end up having to pay the bill for the excesses of the football industry.
After Mediapart first revealed the existence within the French Football Federation (FFF) of a secret plans to institute ethnic quotas on players recruited to its national training academies, a leading French football official earlier this year claimed that the country’s professional league clubs tacitly employ ethnic discrimination in the recruitment of players. Called to account by the French sports minister and the official ombudsman, the FFF, in an official response to which Mediapart has gained access, has decided there is no case to answer about an issue its chairman has said he “couldn’t give a damn” about. Michaël Hajdenberg and Fabrice Arfi report.
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