For the first time since the 2013-2014 season, no French club will be present in the semi-finals of the Women’s Champions League.
While Olympique Lyonnais has dominated European women’s football almost unchallenged, with eight titles in eleven years, the Rhone club was eliminated in the quarter-finals of the Champions League, Thursday March 30, against Chelsea, just like Paris Saint-Germain, a few hours earlier, against Wolfsburg. Eliminations symbols of the loss of power of French football on the European scene, at a time of the emergence of English and Spanish clubs.
“Organizing international competitions is good. Investing in our championship is better. We are picking up and the 2019 World Cup had no impact“. In a tweet, and while the French Football Federation formalized its candidacy to host Euro 2025, Lyonnaise Ada Hegerberg expressed the weariness felt by the players of D1 Arkema, in February 2022, while the neighboring championships continue to develop and that the French championship is falling behind. The elimination of Lyon and Paris in the quarter-finals of the Champions League is just another example, and for the first time in eleven seasons, no club French will not participate in the semi-finals of the Champions League.
Under the impetus of Olympique Lyonnais and Paris Saint-Germain, French women’s football had nevertheless taken the lead over its competitors, culminating in the Franco-French final between the two clubs in 2017. Better still, on the thirteen finals of the Champions League in its current form, since 2010, only two posters did not include at least one French club. But in the meantime, the English first division has become more professional, in 2018, then followed by Italy and then Spain. FC Barcelona has thus established itself among the greats of Europe, with three finals played in the last four editions of the Champions League, and a new semi-final this year, just like Chelsea, which is more and more regularly present in the last square.
The virtuous circle of professionalization
This professionalization has been accompanied by an increase in TV rights. The English Women’s Super League receives some nine million euros per year, compared to 7 million euros for the Spanish Liga… and 1.2 million euros for the French D1. And the crowds have the same differences, with nearly 7,000 spectators on average per match in English stadiums, compared to 841 in France, according to a study by Two Circles, a sports marketing agency specializing in data. Enough to generate significant revenue for competing clubs from Lyon and PSG in the European Cup.
“When the Spanish football authorities decided to create a league, they put the financial means into it. Barcelona and Chelsea, for example, gave themselves the means to have effective people in key positions”noted Marinette Pichon, former French international, to franceinfo, in 2021. Since then, these preferential conditions in English clubs in particular, have pushed French internationals to leave the national championship, like Eve Perisset, now a Chelsea player , or Estelle Cascarino, left for Manchester United.
“We need to improve the infrastructure, the stadiums, the conditions for broadcasting on TV. The Federation must move forward on a lot of subjects: training in clubs, youth championships so that they can play in championships that allow them to toughen up at a high level. There are several points like that that we have to work on quickly because otherwise we will quickly be overwhelmed and it would be a shame for French women’s football.”, alerted Sonia Bompastor, OL coach, in May 2022 on RMC. Her message was heard all the same, since the FFF is working on the creation of a professional women’s football league which should take place from the 2023-2024 season.