The European season of French clubs ended Thursday evening, with the elimination of OM at the gates of the Europa League final, and their hunt for points in the UEFA index stopped at the same time. The total of Ligue 1 clubs thus stood at 66,831 points. As has been the case since March 13, France ends the year in 5th place in the ranking calculated over the last five seasons. This will allow it to have four qualifiers in the Champions League (three direct plus one in the preliminary rounds) as well as seven clubs on the European scene in total next season, just like in 2025-2026.
The residents of L1 managed to win their duel with those of Eredivisie, while the Netherlands had swung in front (+ 0.719 points) at the start of the season by removing the points from 2018-2019. At the end of the preliminary rounds, the French outlay was even 2,769 points, but the trend was reversed as soon as the group stages began.
With two clubs in the semi-finals when no Dutch went further than the round of 16, France even opened up an interesting lead: 5,531 points. But this does not mean that a sufficient gap has been acquired, like that with Portugal (10.515). Because, from this summer, the fight will resume. With an element which puts the advantage of the L1 into perspective: the 11,666 points acquired in 2019-2020 will be lost, when the Netherlands will only give up 9,400 points. The gap is thus virtually 3,265 points at the start of next season, which will determine the number of European places in 2026-2027. French clubs will continue to pay for another year for their catastrophic 2020-2021 financial year (7,916).
