France: "I hear the frustration of the athletes and the presidents of Ligue 1" (R. Maracineanu)

“I hear the frustration of the athletes and the presidents of Ligue 1 clubs, because it is above all them that we listen to. In the context that we had on 11/05/2020 (beginning of the post-lockdown phase in France), we could not, with the proposal that we had on the table - a French championship to end by 03/08/2020 - authorize a resumption earlier than what we did there," affirmed Roxana Maracineanu, the French Minister of Sports, on the radio channel RTL on 24/05/2020, about the definitive stop of the 2019-20 French professional championships announced by Édouard Philippe, the French Prime Minister, on 28/04/2020.

Aleksander Ceferin, president of UEFA, specifies however in the letter dated 14/05/2020 and addressed to Jean-Michel Aulas, chairman of Olympique Lyonnais, regarding the supposed deadline of 03/08/2020 was "recommended and tentative, and not official."

"There would need to be at least four weeks of training (before resuming games). It takes a while to (physically) recover from such confinement and be ready for collective games. We also had infection clusters in…