“Like the Netherlands and Scotland”: insufficient performance, but high salaries, DNCG fights for League 1

Better, but still a lot of money lost. Ligue 1 clubs lost 273 million euros last season, 582 million euros last year, DNCG president Jean-Marc Miqueler said in an interview with L’Equipe magazine on Wednesday.

An interview in which the head of French football’s financial police tackles a sensitive topic: the link between the wage bill of elite teams and their performance in European competition.

“It is useful to remember that, given equal productivity, the wage bill in France is higher than in Italy, Germany and even England,” emphasizes Jean-Marc Miqueler. We calculated the wage rate per point scored in UEFA competitions by teams participating in European competition over the past five years. This average is €11.5 million per point for the 34 major league clubs. In France it is 17.3 million… The personnel costs of French clubs are too high compared to their productivity. »

“Money doesn’t solve all problems”

“Achieve a total of points equal to that of the top three clubs in the top leagues (England, Spain, Italy and Germany), we need to add up the indicators of six French clubs,” he continues. France has reached only one final in the last five years (PSG in the 2020 Champions League final), as have the Netherlands and Scotland, whose clubs have wage bills three to four times smaller. This clearly shows the need to work on sports performance. Money is not the answer to everything. »

Ligue 1 still has three opportunities to take a club to the continental final this season, as Paris faced Barcelona in the C1 quarter-finals, Marseille (vs Benfica in the Europa League) and Lille (vs Aston Villa in the Europa League). European Conference) are still ongoing. For the first time since 2004, France sent three clubs to the quarter-finals of European competition.