The 2021-2022 season presents a nice increase in licensees for the FFF, even if the referees and managers are still struggling.
As of May 11, 2022, the French Football Federation has 2,127,365 licensees. Even if there are double licenses between futsal or educators, this represents the second best season for French football. In 2018-2019, the reference season, there were 2,198,760 licensees. These last two seasons have been disrupted by the Covid-19 pandemic, with in particular a very sharp drop in 2020-2021 (1,901,453 licensees).
Even with the constraints of autumn and winter (obligation of the health pass then the vaccination pass), the licensees therefore returned to the clubs. And especially children. Animation football (U6 to U11) has made great progress with 511,658 young boys and 50,846 young girls. If it is still below the reference season for boys (553,515 in 2018-2019), girls are on the rise (40,145 in 2018-2019). It’s the same for seniors with a drop for men (511,903 against 546,130) and an increase for women (44,686 against 40,490).
Referees and leaders still down!
If the French Football Federation has been able to bounce back after the pandemic with an increase in licensees, there are nevertheless two black spots: the leaders and the referees. Despite the creation of the voluntary license (4,468 this season), the number of leaders is down (241,150 compared to 257,726 in 2018-2019). As we reported in the file of our monthly FootAmateur Le Mag n°1, the number of referees is still decreasing.
We note a small increase compared to last year (+ 1,014), which is logical since the training sessions could not take place in 2020-2021, but all the same 2,500 fewer officials than during the 2018-2019 season (21,541 against 24,083). It therefore remains rather worrying because many Districts cannot appoint assistant referees in Departmental 1!
This season, all Leagues have gained licensees compared to 2020-2021. But with different progressions. The League of Paris Île-de-France experienced the strongest increase (+ 19.28%) ahead of Corsica (+ 17.54%) and the Mediterranean (+ 15.04%). Conversely, Brittany (+ 6.93%) is the weakest, ahead of Pays de la Loire (+ 8.47%) and Grand-Est (+ 9.93%). These are also the only three Leagues to be below 10%.
