French football journalist Philippe Auclair joined The Football Show on the confusion surrounding the French football season - and he went on an impassioned rant against footballing authorities.

On Tuesday, it was announced that the French league season was over, but the many-speed approach to European league seasons shows the highest authorities are 'wasting time'.

"The people that are squealing the loudest are those that stand to lose the least," said Auclair of the PR battles all over Europe.

"Which are the countries that have done the best in controlling this awful thing, in Europe? Greece and Portugal.

"They are not the richest countries in Europe, but they acted the quickest. Portugal acted much quicker than anybody else.

"The Greeks are on top of things. The Mauritians, in Africa, were perhaps the ones who acted in the most rapid and decisive way. One thing about Mauritius - they have have nine cases of Covid-19 in a population of 2.6m.

"It is these people that we should be looking at, they have taken the right decisions very quickly and embraced them to the hilt. Once you do that, you are allowed to reopen more swiftly.

"The problem is not just in football - if England, Ireland and France had acted more quickly then our football would be able to restart more quickly. This is why Germany are in a position to start more quickly.

"We shouldn't be looking at football as disassociated from the rest of what is happening. The thought is absurd."

Auclair looked at the specific financial situations of the sport's governing bodies, particularly FIFA who are 'sitting on $2.5bn'.

"It teaches us a lot about the way football is fragmented and atomised. Instead of having one common discourse, we have got the UEFA discourse, the FIFA discourse, the French government discourse [and so on.]

"It needn't be atomised. We are talking about player welfare and health - that is everywhere."

Auclair believes that this speaks of a wider malaise within the game that has been exacerbated by the pandemic.

"We have been in lockdown for how long? We have been locked down for weeks and weeks and during all this time, we have wasted our time. Football has wasted its time by imagining crazy scenarios.

"Remember what people were saying in early March, remember what people were saying before the Premier League suspended itself after Mikel Arteta was found to have contracted the virus.

"Nonsense. Anybody with an ounce of sense knew it was nonsense, but the interests were so big and so powerful that this discourse about short- and medium-term concerns was allowed to take precedence.

"We are now discovering that reality has bitten back and we have got a very good bite indeed."

French football

To more prosaic matters, Auclair spoke about the situation in France and the differing party lines coming from the French Football Federation and the league's authorities.

On Tuesday, it looked as if the football season had officially been cancelled as Prime Minister Édouard Philippe announced the end of team sports until September.

"I'm not so sure that this is the end of the story as the start of another," said Auclair.

"Football was mentioned almost en passant in a sentence that was about the 2019-20 season in professional sport.

"There were no indications precisely as to what the Prime Minister was actually advocating apart from 'you cannot play, that's it - and the earliest that you can play is 1 September'."

It now appears as if the speech has merely muddied the waters further.

"It appears that things are not as clear-cut as that. For example, the hypothesis that games could be played behind closed doors some time in August or September to finish the season is not something that the government is necessarily against.

"What they said is basically that we have to stop thinking about these crazy schemes to start football again in June or July.

"The French FA is very clear - the season is over, the positions which were on the league table at the end of the 28th round of games are the final positions.

"The French league hasn't yet come up with a solution - so in a way, the season is over but we don't know what has happened."

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