Playoffs in European football should come with ‘buyer beware’ warning

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So, are copies of “Moneyball” that hard to find in France?

That was one of my first thoughts with the news that Ligue 1 is considering adopting revolutionary, North American-style playoffs to decide the champion of the French top division. The hope is that more eyeballs on the league will follow.

European soccer leagues have long walked a moral high ground over North American leagues such as the NHL, NFL and MLB because they award the league title — and the financial rewards and European competition spot that comes with it — to the team with the best record after the most number of games. And success over a lengthy period is part of what made a revolutionary thinker himself, longtime Oakland Athletics baseball general manager Billy Beane, so notable. Beane spent low on undervalued players and used underlying metrics to predict future success. It led to a consistently strong regular-season A’s team that operated on a fraction of the budget of its competitors. The team was documented in a must-see sports movie featuring Brad Pitt, derived from a book by Michael Lewis.

That’s the kind of attention Ligue 1, undoubtedly the fifth-biggest of the big five European leagues, wants, right?

So how did Beane feel about the postseason — where MLB teams are truly judged — according to the book itself?

“My s— doesn’t work in the playoffs.”

What a line. And, if you’re a Ligue 1 executive considering the dramatic proposal, it’s a line that should serve as a strong case of “buyer beware,” as well.

Because doing away with tradition and adopting playoffs to determine the Ligue 1 champion would completely change the landscape of French soccer. Not necessarily for the better, either. Playoffs, as Beane poignantly alluded to, are so fraught with randomness that the most diligent planning and roster building still can’t always prepare teams for the second season.

Maple Leafs coach Craig Berube is trying to bring a long-awaited title to Toronto. (Claus Andersen / Getty Images)

That’s become clear to me as I’ve covered the NHL’s Toronto Maple Leafs since 2016 for The Athletic, in tandem with my Canadian soccer coverage. Over those nine seasons, the Leafs have the third-best winning percentage in the NHL’s regular season. And they don’t have anything close to a championship to show for it.

They have iced teams that have finished as strong over a long stretch of games as Beane’s regular season teams did. But a few bad bounces and erroneous plays here and there in the postseason (among other, deeper-rooted issues to be sure), and the Leafs have fans as deeply scarred as those of the A’s.

That’s the reality that Ligue 1 must accept. Perhaps it will be happy to do so, given the inherent predictability of having a powerhouse like Paris Saint-Germain, which secured a fourth consecutive Ligue 1 title last season.

But anyone who buys into the spectacle of playoffs knows full well: Their entertainment value comes from the heavy dose of luck and randomness.

The large slate of games on a balanced schedule allows for errors to correct themselves over time. Losing streaks can be swept under the rug if there are positive trends to be found in the losses.

But in the playoffs, there isn’t a rug in sight. One loss, however unfair or owing to a strange bounce here and there, can change the course of a team’s season. Say the names Alex Galchenyuk or Travis Dermott in Toronto, and you’ll immediately be subject to rants about how these players — on one of the best Leafs teams in recent memory — had costly turnovers in two playoff overtime games in 2021. Each turnover led to a playoff winner the other way. The Leafs had a 3-1 series lead against the Montreal Canadiens but lost momentum, never recovered from those two blunders and improbably, squandered arguably their best chance to win a Stanley Cup since 1967.

It didn’t matter that the Leafs finished with a much better record over 56 games that season compared with the Canadiens. What mattered were the crucial details in a high-stakes environment and how small the margins become.

Or, in more common parlance: That’s playoffs, baby.

Lille is the only team to have broken PSG’s dominance since 2017. (Sylvain Lefevre / Getty Images)

Is Ligue 1 ready to accept that the best teams will not always be crowned champions? Is Ligue 1 ready to accept that the strongest brand it has going for it — PSG — could no longer be associated with consistent titles? Or that the advent of a playoff system and the possibility of heroes turning to goats with one play could scare players away from signing in France?

Adopting playoffs could change the way Ligue 1 teams prepare through the season itself. There could now be, in essence, two seasons. This isn’t to assume tanking, or, say, not fielding the strongest possible lineup will be an immediate byproduct of playoffs, not with the ever-present threat of relegation. But by its very nature, the regular season would count less, simply because it is no longer the direct route to overall success. Suddenly, the most important factor would be in getting hot at the right time, as hockey’s Edmonton Oilers, a sixth seed in the current NHL postseason but on a current streak of seven playoff wins from eight.

Point is, it’s safe to assume some Ligue 1 teams could end up devaluing the regular season as long as they qualify for the playoffs. Even if, of course, team executives and managers might publicly state otherwise.

Checks and balances, you ask? Ligue 1 could have these in its back pocket: namely, with Champions League spots continuing to be awarded based on league position, regardless of the playoff outcome. These are options the NHL and NBA, also currently midway through its postseason, don’t have.

But the excitement surrounding the playoffs could lead to other changes.

Consider three words that get fans in North American leagues with playoffs salivating but often draw blank stares from the European soccer community: the trade deadline.

Trade deadline day is the last day of the season — relatively close to the playoffs — for teams to make acquisitions via trade. It’s the final opportunity to gear up for the postseason. Teams that are in on the playoff hunt buy, and those on the outside looking in usually opt to sell by trading players away.

If there is more incentive for teams to win via playoffs, could that lead to more activity in the winter transfer window? It’s a window that, generally speaking, doesn’t feature serious movement like the summer window. But if there are eight teams that fancy their chances at winning the title midway through the season compared with a smaller number traditionally, the desire to add pieces could increase. Smaller teams could benefit from an influx of cash by selling players in the winter. Relegation evens things out, but more buying and selling in a quieter window probably isn’t a bad thing for the financial health of the league.

Ligue 1 lost its biggest star when Kylian Mbappe joined Real Madrid but could become the first major European league to adopt playoffs. (Jean-Francois Monier / Agence France-Presse via Getty Images)

It’s also worth wondering whether teams will place greater importance on what type of players they might acquire. More common parlance in North American leagues?

“They’re playoff performers.”

The types of players who elevate their games late in the season. Who don’t cower under pressure. Who might not be the flashiest or most skilled players but are rich with intangibles.

Could playoff-bound Ligue 1 teams learn to sacrifice glam for grit? Could players who know how to win ugly but get results become in vogue?

And, looking ahead, could that change the aesthetics of the Ligue 1 game?

Watch enough playoff Game 7s (which feels like what the Ligue 1 playoffs will end up being), and they all strike a similar feel. They’re cagey. Teams are afraid of making mistakes. They’re fun to watch in a ‘I have bitten off my nails and am now gnawing at bone’ kind of way.

And so if the goal is to increase attention on Ligue 1, the notion of playoffs could do just that. But don’t be surprised if the league looks dramatically different in the years to follow, for better or worse.

(Top photo of Paris Saint-Germain: Mustafa Yalcin / Anadolu via Getty Images)

This news was originally published on this post .

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