Lens claim Ligue 1 risks sporting fairness over PSG v Liverpool request
Lens have vehemently opposed Paris Saint-Germain’s request to postpone their crucial Ligue 1 clash which is sandwiched between their two Champions League quarter-final matches against Liverpool.
The French club are locked in a title race with the Parisian giants, sitting just a point behind Luis Enrique’s side in the table, and have claimed any rescheduling of the contest would see Ligue 1 risk sporting fairness.
PSG’s trip to Lens is scheduled for Saturday 11 April – three days after their quarter-final first leg in Paris and three days before the second leg in Liverpool – meaning they face the challenge of three potentially season-defining matches in less than a week.They have therefore made a request to France’s Ligue de Football Professionel (LFP) to move the league meeting but Lens have responded by issuing a forceful statement.
Insisting that fixture details were finalised and agreed upon on 6 March, Lens highlight the “troubling sentiment” that is seeing the league “gradually relegated to the status of an adjustment variable at the whim of the European imperatives of some”.
They also point out how a date change will not just greatly benefit PSG – by far the richest, most powerful in the division – but will also harm Lens, forcing their fixtures to become congested.
A club statement read: “Changing the date of this match today would mean, for Racing Club de Lens, being deprived of competition for 15 days and then chaining matches every three days – a rhythm that corresponds neither to the one defined at the start of the season, nor to the resources of a club that could absorb this type of new constraint without consequence.
“It would therefore be understood that the tenth budget in the league should adapt to the demands of the most powerful, in the name of interests that, evidently, now extend beyond the domestic framework, which has already been lightened in recent seasons.”
see
Translate This Article
