The Ligue 1 2019/20 season came to an abrupt end on 28th April 2020 when the French Prime Minister announced that no sporting events in the country would occur before September, at the earliest. Paris Saint-Germain were declared champions based on total points secured after the completion of just 27 games before the coronavirus had brought a stop to sporting events across the world.
With the plan for the 2020/21 season to commence soon. It seems the perfect time to reflect on the season and to see if we are able to learn something about the teams that featured in Ligue 1 2019/20. The visualisation below shows how each team distributed minutes to the different age brackets within their squad.
However, before we move into analysing the distribution of minutes. It is interesting to note that OGC Nice have the youngest squad in terms of their average age at 23.24. This helps explain the fact that Nice had the highest amount of minutes played for the U23 age bracket. For the champions, PSG, the majority share of minutes was given to players between 26-29 years old, which is interesting considering this is considering the peak age for a footballer. Olympique Marseille, with a mean age of 25.74, seems to have a very good mix of players across all age groups. Rennes – the surprise team in the top four this season, can be proud of what they have achieved this season with such a young squad, with only 4 other teams bettering their mean squad age of 24.61. Lille’s U23 group of players have played the most minutes among every U23 group in the division.
Dijon, who finished fourth from bottom, have the second oldest squad in terms of mean age at 27.42, although, interestingly despite having the second oldest squad, Dijon gave the fewest amount of minutes to the 26-29 age group, which we have already discussed is the peak age for a footballer.
