Under English Pressure, a Record PSG and a Silent OM: What to Take From Ligue 1’s Transfer Window

France’s Ligue 1 has once again paid its bills by selling its best assets. When the transfer window closed on Tuesday, clubs had generated just under 1.3 billion euros in sales, compared with about 600 million euros in spending, according to Transfermarkt.

The numbers show a strongly positive balance, but Le Figaro presents it as another talent drain rather than a sign of sporting strength. Few clubs appear to have genuinely improved their squads during the 2026 offseason. The league’s “league of talents” slogan has taken on an uncomfortable meaning, with those talents increasingly serving to refill clubs’ badly depleted coffers.

The financial position of some clubs has become worrying, even critical. Television rights have fallen to meagre levels and no longer provide enough income to support Ligue 1 clubs properly. That pressure helps explain why the division has broadly been stripped of talent during the transfer market.

The headline singles out Paris Saint-Germain’s record activity and Olympique de Marseille’s silence. It also points to the wider dependence on English clubs, with Bradley Barcola and Ayyoub Bouadi among the players who followed the money to England this summer.

The French Professional Football League is preparing to launch a tender for the 2029-34 period. The article cuts off as it begins to describe what the league must do next, leaving the financial strain and the scale of the sell-off as its central conclusions.