Court rejects appeals against ending French football season

News24
23 May 2020, 02:12 GMT+10

A Paris court on Friday rejected an appeal from relegated French 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 30 April 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 "OL's exclusive interests" and claimed that French football could suffer short-term losses of €900 million.

Amiens say they felt the ruling was "unjust" after the season was ended early as they were just four points from sagfety.

"The decision is a punishment from the league. It is unjust," the club's president, Bernard Joannin, said on Tuesday.

Toulouse were 17 points from safety when the season was suspended in March.

"There were more than 30 points in play," Toulouse president Olivier Sadran said this week.

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