Ligue 1 Red Cards: Is There a Rise in Dismissals?

With five new red cards awarded this weekend, Ligue 1 concluded the first half of the season with 52 exclusions. A number already close to the total of the previous year, and which places French football at the top, among the five major championships, in the number of red cards distributed.

A red card for Toulouse on Friday, two others for Monaco and Lille on Saturday, and the last two, Sunday, only for Marseille. Ligue 1 turned red again during this 17th and final day of the first leg, played from Friday January 2 to Sunday January 4. A (bad) habit this season, which increased the total of red cards from the referees’ back pockets to 52 at mid-season.

A considerable total, since it is already only 14 units from… the final count of last year (66) and 17 from that before (69), while there are 17 days remaining. Since the move to 18 clubs (instead of 20) during the 2023-2024 season, the trend is logically downward, since there are four fewer days to play each season (34 instead of 38). But this season started on other bases: if the trend continues by the end of the season, 104 red cards (including 76 direct exclusions) could be distributed. A hefty addition, in the values ​​of the years at 20 clubs.

Furthermore, with 38 direct expulsions, six fewer than the entirety of last season, the figures confirm that referees tend to reach into their back pocket much more quickly, without prior warning. “That’s four games out of five where we get a red card in the first half”lamented Thomas Meunier at the Ligue 1+ microphone Saturday, after Lille saw their defender Alexsandro sent off in the 13th minute during the defeat against Rennes (2-0). “We can’t continue like this, it’s getting really complicated. Sometimes it’s justified, but tonight, unless the referee’s argument is undeniable, I really have a hard time accepting this decision because he’s ruining the match for us.” decided the Belgian player.

Criticized by the board Lille and especially its president Olivier Létang, who had personally insulted him in the corridors (“You know what you did, it’s a shame, a scandal”), referee Eric Wattellier denied any personal interpretation. “We are in a situation of obvious goal action annihilation. It is a decision which is unavoidable and which must be taken, whether in the first or the 90th minute, because it meets the criteria of the laws of the game. There is no question of timing, it is a red card which had to be distributed. I do not take into account what happened in the past, I take decisions with regard to the laws of the game which seem to me to be the fairest.”had justified the man in black at the Ligue 1+ microphone.

However, is Ligue 1 sanctioning more than its neighbors this season? With an average of 0.16 red cards per match, the French championship is the most severe, ahead of the Spanish Liga (0.14) and the German Bundesliga (0.10), while the Italian Serie A (0.07) and the English Premier League (0.05) are the best performers in fair play over the first half of the season.

Over the last ten years, Ligue 1 has been battling with the Spanish and Italian championships in terms of red cards issued, quite clearly above the English and German championships. In this respect, England, which has 20 clubs, unlike France (since 2023) and Germany (18), is an example since it still remains below the two championships.

The trend is therefore generally upward this season, which will not help the tense relations between the refereeing body and certain Ligue 1 clubs, while Pablo Longoria (president of OM), Paulo Fonseca (coach of Lyon) and Olivier Létang (president of Losc) took the referees to task this year. “It’s a real questioning, not just for us, every weekend, we have problems with refereeing. It’s no longer possible. We are asked, for the show, to put cameras in the locker rooms, on the buses… But if on the field, we have refereeing content like that…”had let go of Olivier Létang at the end of September after a defeat against Lyon (1-0), which earned him a match suspension.

“It is the responsibility of all of us, starting with the president of the French Football Federation, since arbitration depends on the FFF, to sit around a table,” added the manager, now at the head of the Ligue 1 college. “There is no exchange, no contradiction, we have people in front of us who are in their bubble, people who we don’t know what they are doing”he denounced, while the Lille coach, Bruno Genesio, had been excluded from the bench during the match against Lyon.

On Saturday, Habib Beye called for appeasement between the different players after the stormy victory against Lille. “We must help those involved in the game, whether they are footballers or referees, and this type of pressure that we can have at half-time destabilizes an entire context”slipped the Rennes coach.