Is French Club Football Now as Good as Germany?

It has been a subject for minor rumbling over the last decade, but sometimes a change can happen so slowly but be so much heralded, that nobody actually notices when it is complete. One of those matters has been the gradual decline of the supremacy of German club football since the heady days when Bayern Munich and even little Borussia Mönchengladbach were strutting around Europe causing as much fear an names like Milan and Barcelona do now.

That decline, barring the hiccup of Borussia Dortmund’s shock European Cup (Champions League) win in 1997, has been accepted as more or less complete for some time. However the second part of the story is the far slower surrendering of the tag ‘fourth best league in Europe’ to the nearest challenger France’s Ligue Un.

Recent Champions League results have produced some reason to take another look.  In the Group stages, Bordeaux finished top of Bayern’s group, a comfortable six points a head of the Bavarians. The three French sides picked up 36 points from their 18 matches, the three German sides only 26, despite VFB Stuttgart pulling an unbelievably easy group.

Both countries supply two of the last 16 and their fortunes have suggested that French football may now produce the stronger sides. Both French clubs won. Lyon beat the mighty Real Madrid 1-0 at home, and Bordeaux triumphed by the same score in their away leg at Olympiakos. There is every reason to believe both will progress to the last eight.

Stuttgart completed a valiant 1-1 draw at home to Barcelona but are probably on their way out of the competition, while Bayern needed assistance from Europe’s worst referee to gain a narrow 2-1 home win over Fiorentina.

Should the Italian side overturn that deficit, as most of Europe seems to be hoping, then there is real reason to assume that Ligue Un has finally eclipsed the Bundesliga.

Tags: Champions League

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