The end of the season is always a time for reflection.
One year ago, Total Football Analysis published our first-ever Ligue 1 Team of the Season for the 2023/2024 campaign.
Now, we’re back again with an all-star XI from the French top flight for the 2024/2025 campaign, which saw Luis Enrique’s Paris Saint-Germain reign supreme as champions again.
This season also saw Olympique de Marseille return to the UEFA Champions League qualification spots, alongside AS Monaco, who have secured their place in Europe’s premier competition for the second consecutive year through their league position.
OGC Nice will participate in the UEFA Champions League qualifiers.
At the same time, Lille OSC and Olympique Lyonnais make the UEFA Europa League group stage, with RC Strasbourg taking the final spot in European competition from the French top flight, with Liam Rosenior’s side set to participate in the UEFA Conference League next term.
At the other end of the table, Montpellier, AS Saint-Étienne, and Stade Reims will be relegated to Ligue 2 for the 2025/2026 season.
Regardless of their respective teams’ final league position, however, there were plenty of standout performers across the board, up and down the table, in Ligue 1 this season.
Our data-led Ligue 1 Team of the Year, limited to one player per team, aims to cut through some of the broader noise as we strive to compile a fair, representative XI of Ligue 1 stars for the recently completed campaign.
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Goalkeeper: Djordje Petrović At RC Strasbourg Alsace – 25 Years Old
Just as we did with our 2023/2024 Ligue 1 Team of the Season last year, we’ve opted for the 4-3-3 formation for this team, as that was the shape primarily used by league winners and newly crowned European champions Paris Saint-Germain throughout their successful campaign.
Starting with the goalkeeper, we’ve chosen Djordje Petrović as our side’s last line of defence.
Petrović was one of the key contributors to Strasbourg’s outstanding campaign, which saw the Alsace side qualify for European football next season, earning him his place in our XI.
The 25-year-old, who spent the season on loan at Strasbourg from Premier League giants Chelsea, ended the campaign having prevented more goals (11) than any other goalkeeper in France’s top-flight, based on xG faced and having kept the joint-third most clean sheets (10).
Petrović finished the season with an awe-inspiring save rate (93.4 percentile) and heavy, proactive involvement in Strasbourg’s build-up play, as exemplified by the high ranking in passes per 90 and passes received per 90 on the pizza chart above.
Out of possession, Petrović is capable of sweeping up behind a high backline and generally commands his box well.
He is unafraid to come off his line and claim crosses.
The ‘keeper also exhibits top-class positioning, diving and handling.
In our view, Petrović’s exploits in 2024/2025 make him a no-brainer for the Ligue 1 Team of the Season.
Right-Back: Jonathan Clauss At OGC Nice – 32 Years Old
Next up is one of only two players to feature in both the 2024/2025 and 2023/2024 editions of Total Football Analysis’ Ligue 1 Team of the Season, Jonathan Clauss, who joined OGC Nice from Olympique de Marseille last summer and maintained his high level of performance with that move about 200km east in the south of France.
As we identified last year, Clauss’ defensive performance was not exactly at the level you might hope for from your right-back—that’s always going to be the case for this player.
However, you don’t have Clauss on your team for defensive solidity; rather, you choose Clauss for what he offers in possession.
The pros vastly outweigh the cons yet again this year—to a greater extent than we can say for any other Ligue 1 right-back this season—making Clauss one of the only two players to retain his place in our Ligue 1 all-star XI.
As was the case during his time at Marseille, Clauss was heavily involved in Nice’s possession play, with teammates frequently looking for the France international.
Clauss dribbled less than he did with Marseille during his first season with Nice.
However, his playmaking remained extremely high, with the veteran full-back providing more assists (seven) and more expected assists (7.58) than any other right-back in Ligue 1 this term.
The 32-year-old’s chance creation primarily came from teammates finding him in space to get his head up and pick out his pass, utilising his world-class crossing ability inside the final third.
Clauss can also create via set pieces, another dangerous weapon in his arsenal that further strengthens the argument for his place on this team.
Right Centre-Back: Leonardo Balerdi At Olympique de Marseille – 26 Years Old
Next to Clauss on the right side of defence, we’ll find Leonardo Balerdi from Clauss’ former club, Marseille.
Balerdi is a very well-rounded centre-back who provides a lot both in and out of possession.
He was a key part of Marseille’s first season under Roberto De Zerbi, which saw them bounce back from an eighth-place finish in 2023/2024 to second place in 2024/2025, with the Argentina international featuring in three-quarters of his team’s league minutes.
Balerdi ended the campaign with a 72.99% success rate in defensive duels, with the 26-year-old having engaged in a relatively large number of ground duels this season.
The Argentinian was equally reliable in aerial duels when required.
In possession, Balerdi was heavily involved, as you might expect of a centre-back in a De Zerbi team.
He rose to the challenge well, putting up impressive numbers in all possession metrics evaluated on our pizza chart above.
Balerdi is a solid centre-back in terms of ball retention and pass selection, but he is progressive, as required by De Zerbi’s system.
He will look for line-breaking passes and opportunities to carry the ball forward into space, drawing pressure towards him, thus creating space for teammates elsewhere to whom he can help progress the ball.
Left Centre-Back: Alexsandro At Lille OSC – 25 Years Old
Next to Balerdi, we’re going with Lille’s Alexsandro, who enjoyed his most involved season since joining Les Dogues from GD Chaves in Portugal.
Alexsandro is less aggressive in entering duels than his centre-back partner in our Team of the Season, Balerdi.
However, he is a very solid centre-back in aerial duels.
This season, he boasted a 93.6 percentile rank for aerial duel success among left centre-backs from Europe’s top-five leagues, having ended the campaign with a 66.36% aerial duel success rate.
Alexsandro is extremely comfortable in possession of the ball; he loves receiving the ball deep during the build-up phase and helping his team progress upfield.
The 25-year-old completed 9.84 progressive passes per 90 minutes this term, with a 78.29% success rate on progressive passes.
He can still improve on his ground duels and interception ability.
Nevertheless, he undoubtedly deserves recognition for a stellar 2024/2025 campaign in which he played almost 90% of his team’s league minutes, helping them to qualify for the UEFA Europa League next season.
Left-Back: Adrien Truffert At Stade Rennais – 23 Years Old,
At left-back, we’ve chosen 23-year-old Rennes captain Adrien Truffert, who’s subject to transfer speculation around a potential move to the Premier League with either Aston Villa or Bournemouth at the time of writing this piece.
It was a close one between Truffert and AS Monaco’s Caio Henrique for the left-back spot in this team, but Truffert edged out the Brazilian to seal his place in our Ligue 1 Team of the Season mainly due to his superior defensive abilities on top of the quality to contribute offensively as well, though perhaps not to the same extent as Henrique.
As the white metrics on our pizza chart indicate, Truffert performs well across the board, from ground duels to aerial duels to ‘positioning’ (a custom metric combining tackles and interceptions), making him a highly reliable wide defender.
Truffert is also active at the other end of the pitch, tallying up the third-highest xA (4.67) of any left-back in France’s top flight this term and making three assists.
Like Clauss, Truffert is a crossing threat; he showed enough quality at both ends of the pitch this season to warrant his place in this XI.
Defensive Midfielder: Pedro Chirivella At Nantes – 28 Years Old
Moving on from the backline, we enter the midfield area and begin with the deep-lying midfielder, Nantes’ Pedro Chirivella.
Chirivella was a strong consideration for our team last year in both the holding midfield and right central midfield positions, losing out to Pierre Lees-Melou and Youssouf Fofana, respectively, in both of those slots in 2023/2024.
Lees-Melou (limited minutes due to injury) and Fofana (summer transfer to AC Milan) were both off the cards this year.
At the same time, Chirivella maintained a lot of the form he’d shown last season in 2024/2025, so he was a pretty easy selection for the team this time around.
The ex-Liverpool player can moderately disrupt play in the middle of the park, but not nearly enough to make him a world-class out-and-out defensive midfielder.
Chirivella earns his place in this team and, indeed, the Nantes team from week to week with his on-the-ball abilities.
The Spaniard is an extremely intelligent player with outstanding vision, capable of line-breaking passes and switching play in an instant.
He completed 8.64 progressive passes per 90 this term and retained the fourth-best progressive pass accuracy (83.83%) of any holding midfielder to have played at least 800 minutes in Ligue 1 this season.
Chirivella loves spreading the play around the pitch and boasts a wide passing range, making more long passes (7.89 per 90) than any other holding midfielder with at least 800 minutes played in the French top flight this term.
This Nantes midfielder is one of the most underrated players in Ligue 1, due to his on-the-ball contributions, and deserves recognition for his consistent quality and the impact he has on his team on the pitch.
Right Central Midfielder: Mahdi Camara At Brest – 26 Years Old
To the right of Chirivella, we’ve chosen Brest’s Mahdi Camara.
As the pizza chart would suggest, we’ve mainly chosen Camara due to his attacking exploits.
The central midfielder was one of the biggest midfield goalscoring threats in Ligue 1 this past season, generating the most xG of any Ligue 1 right-sided central midfielder (6.84) and scoring five non-penalty goals, placing him third among players in his position from the league.
Camara is a proactive ball-carrier with 1.99 progressive runs per 90 to his name in 2024/2025; he prefers getting the ball into the final third through carries over progressive passes—though he’ll pass into the final third more often, his respective percentile ranks for passes into the final third and progressive passes are low-to-average, as is his percentile rank for dangerous passes per 90, highlighting how his goal contribution threat is much more based in his goalscoring ability rather than assist-making.
Defensively, Camara contributes a decent amount and represents a solid option in both ground and aerial duels, as well as the custom ‘positioning’ metric, which combines tackles and interceptions.
Overall, the Brest midfielder is a box-to-box asset who significantly contributed to his team’s success in 2024/2025, earning himself some recognition with a place in our XI.
Left Central Midfielder: Téji Savanier At Montpellier – 33 Years Old
At left central midfield, we’re looking at the second and final player to retain his place in our squad from last season—Téji Savanier.
This is perhaps one of the more debatable picks in our XI, given Montpellier’s relegation from Ligue 1 this term.
Savanier was stripped of La Paillade’s captaincy after Christmas due to an unfortunate verbal exchange with a supporter.
Nevertheless, despite playing for a Montpellier side that finished bottom of Ligue 1, scoring 23 goals and winning just four games throughout 2024/2025,
Savanier generated more xA (7.78) than any other central midfielder in the league, contributing five assists on top of his two goals, having generated 3.67 xG.
Despite the challenges his team faced this season, Savanier remained one of Ligue 1’s elite creative midfielders.
He consistently fed the ball to his team’s attackers at an extremely high rate, just as he had the previous season and as he has done consistently since first moving to Ligue 1 with Nîmes Olympique in 2018/2019.
That level of consistency in his creative output will surely give him options this summer, even with his team’s struggles.
Although his commitment was questioned at times this season, the 33-year-old’s ability warrants that attention as well.
For me, Savanier is a deserved repeat member of our TOTS alongside Clauss.
Right Winger: Rayan Cherki At Olympique Lyonnais – 21 Years Old
Now, we move on to the attack, beginning with 21-year-old Rayan Cherki at Lyon.
Personally, I’ve been a massive fan of Rayan Cherki for years.
He was the player I focused on for one of my first big TFA pieces back in 2020 (which you can still read here).
However, it always felt like the promise he showed was never truly realised within the Lyon team and out on the pitch.
This season was a major one for Cherki, as he received more time and responsibility on the pitch, snatched opportunities to showcase his ability, and led the team from an attacking perspective to a far greater extent than in previous years.
The youngster still has a lot left to show and give, which perhaps will happen once his seemingly inevitable move to Pep Guardiola’s Manchester City, which is heavily rumoured at the time of writing, gets completed.
Nevertheless, the 2024/2025 season was a pivotal one for the young Frenchman, who enjoyed more Ligue 1 minutes than in previous campaigns, repaying the team’s and manager’s extra trust with the best goalscoring campaign (eight) and highest seasonal assist tally (11) of his league career so far.
Cherki’s creativity was, perhaps, the most impressive part of his overall performance this term, making the joint-most assists (10) and generating the most xA (8.77) of any player in Ligue 1.
His ability to progress the ball into dangerous positions both via passes and carries was evident this season, especially in the second half of the campaign, when it really felt like the player we’d hoped to see him evolve into all those years ago started coming through.
As a result, he earned his place in our XI, and we hope this is only the beginning for the 21-year-old talent.
Centre-Forward: Ousmane Dembélé At PSG – 28 Years Old
Moving to the centre of our attack line, we find the most valuable player in our team, according to Transfermarkt, €90m-rated Ousmane Dembélé, the Ballon d’Or contender from UEFA Champions League winners Paris Saint-Germain.
The pizza chart is worth a thousand words in this particular instance.
Although Dembélé did not offer much off the ball for much of the Ligue 1 season, his attacking and creative metrics are filling their respective segments across the board, making Dembélé a bit of a no-brainer as the PSG representative for our side.
Indeed, we’d considered the fact he only accumulated 1862 minutes in Ligue 1 this term, yet despite playing just over 50% of his team’s league minutes, he ended up as the top non-penalty goalscorer in the division—outstanding goalscoring efficiency.
Strasbourg’s Emanuel Emegha is an honourable mention for the centre-forward position, as he finished as the league’s second-highest non-penalty goalscorer.
A completely different type of player to Dembélé, the 22-year-old 195cm Dutchman is undoubtedly one to watch in the future.
However, it was Dembélé’s year, even ignoring his UCL exploits and just taking his Ligue 1 contributions into account.
The 28-year-old had probably the season of his career and played a significant role in Les Parisiens’ league title victory.
As a goalscorer and creator, Dembélé was the biggest threat in the division.
Furthermore, Luis Enrique managed to use Dembélé in interesting tactical roles, such as the ‘false 9’ role, which enhanced his team’s style of play and enabled Dembélé to shine to the extent that he did.
As a result, he walks into our XI.
Left Winger: Zuriko Davitashvili At AS Saint-Étienne – 24 Years Old
Last but not least, we come to the left wing, where we’ve chosen Zuriko Davitashvili of AS Saint-Étienne.
Another who may be debatable, given his historic team’s unfortunate end to the season with relegation back to Ligue 2, Davitashvili mainly earned his place in our XI with his creativity for Les Verts.
Davitashvili faced tough competition for the left-wing position from another relegated winger, 24-year-old Keito Nakamura of Stade Reims.
Nakamura was the better goalscorer of the two, with 11 goals in comparison to Davitashvili’s nine.
Nevertheless, the Georgian playmaker blew Nakamura away in the creativity department, generating 4.61 xA to Nakamura’s 1.81 and making eight assists to the Reims winger’s two.
Davitashvili is a great dribbler.
Extremely comfortable with the ball at his feet and capable of going past his man out wide 1v1 to progress into positions for chance creation or goalscoring, his ball-carrying ability helped him to directly contribute to more than 40% of his team’s goals with either a goal or an assist in 2024/2025.
So, despite Saint-Étienne’s relegation, Davitashvili takes the left-wing spot in our XI.
Conclusion
To conclude our analysis, our Team of the Season features two experienced repeat members from last year, some underrated talents in the prime of their careers and some young talent who perhaps deserve a bigger stage to shine in the future.
The average age of our team is just under 26.5, representing a blend of youth, prime, and experience.
This showcases the range of talent available in France’s top-flight.
Now, the anticipation begins to see if any of these players make our TOTS next year or if an entirely new set of 11 players skyrocket to the forefront of French football.
