Farmer's League: how and when did this originate and become caf lexicon?

I think a lot of people underestimate how clued into internet/meme-culture these young stars are. They probably scroll through their mentions and replies a lot. They don't really need to participate to get exposed to it through incessant fans replying to any harmless post they make. Not quite sure where I saw the term first but it's all over FT and /sp/. Though it's usually in reference to Ligue 1, people also use it against the Bundesliga. I personally think it's clear that the Ligue 1 is the weakest of the top 5 leagues but after seeing what the semi's look like in the UCL I suppose you could beg to differ.

Also disagree with people thinking it has anything to do with actual farmers (?). It's clear to me that they're talking about farming talent for the Premier League/La Liga.
 
I find it quite funny as a term, but then I imagine as a follower of the French league it would get quite trying to hear over and over.
 
Let me be perfectly clear, that term became popular due to Neymar's move and it describes farmers and targets the players, not a farming a system.

 
@JPRouve is right

The term means that Ligue 1 players are actually farmers who play football as a hobby.

Not that ligue 1 farms players for other leagues to buy
 
It is the weakest of the top 5 leagues, especially if you look past PSG. I get it would be annoying if you support one of the other French teams but it doesn't change the quality of it.
 
For those who wonder, yeah Mbappé speaks a pretty decent english.

Mbappe is a superstar, so he probably hears a lot of noise on social media from idiot fans who downplay everything he's achieving in ligue 1 by the farmer's league concept, so he's just having a bit of fun with it. I wouldn't be shocked if it came directly from him.

Yeah, players look at their social networks and under each of his tweets you can read dozens of messages saying "quit playing in a farmers league", I guess that's where he saw that.


I really think a lot of people here are disrespectful towards other leagues and their players. 1 hour ago someone just told me that Neymar wasn't a sure thing and that he might not perform in PL, the good old "not PL proven" argument. This is pretty annoying tbh.
 
It's not "caf lexicon," it's all over Reddit and Twitter as well. It's just one of those football memes. Can't say there isn't a grain of truth to it, though: for the size of the country and its national team's prominence, the sheer amount of great players and so on, Ligue 1 has not been a good enough league to live up to those things. They don't even have one serious, persistent powerhouse club, even now that PSG is oil-rich, and even less so before that. It's a little bit like the Bundesliga: for such a powerful footballing nation, you would think there had been more prominent and consistently succesful teams. At least Germany has Bayern. The Bundesliga should have done better than they have, but Ligue 1 has underperformed even worse.

Of the 64 total Champion's League trophies, France has... one, from twenty-seven years ago. They haven't had a finalist since. For a country with a rich footballing history and several generations of excellent national teams, that's kind of pathetic. There has never been a French club with real long-term success. That's frankly a little embarrassing for them. It's basically the Bundesliga without Bayern. PSG will probably end up winning the CL eventually, but it could take another ten years. They're just a French copy of Man City, after all.

The real question is: why does ligue 1 suck? why haven't teams like Lyon, Monaco and Marseille grown over the last 20 years? Why are their revenues low? Why do their teams have to find cheap talent from Brazil?
 
The real question is: why does ligue 1 suck? why haven't teams like Lyon, Monaco and Marseille grown over the last 20 years? Why are their revenues low? Why do their teams have to find cheap talent from Brazil?

Very complicated question and I can't really detail everything but my 1st answer would be the fact that we have bad coaches (poor coaching culture in France) and bad management. Also, football isn't as popular in France as it is in other countries and we have ridiculous taxes (PSG pays more in taxes than all the clubs in PL/Bundes/Liga combined). And since the money is a little tight, clubs don't take risks to try to stay as long as possible in L1 (there's not a lot of money in L2) and aren't creative.
 
Let's have it right, the french league is poor. When was the last time a team won a european trophy? It's been a while..
PSG have spent an absolute fortune and got a very favourable draw to the final, they have hardly been convincing. Fair play to Lyon, they have worked hard and had a bit of luck. These are hardly the best teams in Europe. PSG have the league usually won by March, it's not a competitive division and it's as predictable as Scotland. Mbappe should focus on the next game and not be on Twitter. It's not nice to call the league a farmers league, let's not call it great either.
 
Let's have it right, the french league is poor. When was the last time a team won a european trophy? It's been a while..
PSG have spent an absolute fortune and got a very favourable draw to the final, they have hardly been convincing. Fair play to Lyon, they have worked hard and had a bit of luck. These are hardly the best teams in Europe. PSG have the league usually won by March, it's not a competitive division and it's as predictable as Scotland. Mbappe should focus on the next game and not be on Twitter. It's not nice to call the league a farmers league, let's not call it great either.

I'm sure that tweet is going to completely distract Mbappe from a semi-final of the CL.

The French league is weaker than the Premier league and La Liga, I don't think it's worse than the Bundesliga or Serie A right now, and I don't feel that way because of this CL either. The fodder there is as weak as it is in France, and the English and Spanish fodder isn't much better either. There are just more big teams in England, less so in Spain but more than in the other leagues (including Portugal). The money from TV rights is also a huge factor as @Oly Francis mentioned, combined with the fact that there isn't as much of a focus from either the players or the clubs to keep local talents in the league, mainly because most clubs try to stay above the water and the sums of money they're given are sometimes ridiculous (hi Pepe).

I don't think anyone called it a great league, I don't even think the Premier league or La Liga is a great league to be honest, but it's a decent league that's clearly behind the big dogs but can still churn out a talented squad for a season or two outside of PSG before it gets ripped apart by foreign vultures like with Monaco. I'm not sure what to make of their representation in this year's CL because it's such a unique and crazy year. I think they were actually at a big disadvantage against other leagues in the CL because of their season never resuming, but somehow here we are with two Ligue 1 teams in the semi final, with a 7th placed team dismissing both Italy's best and England's second best team.

That's football at its best for me, I would have never thought I'd see this.
 
The real question is: why does ligue 1 suck? why haven't teams like Lyon, Monaco and Marseille grown over the last 20 years? Why are their revenues low? Why do their teams have to find cheap talent from Brazil?
Think it's pretty hard to change your status these days. Monaco for example won the league and reached the CL semi-finals, the team was just bought by bigger clubs. Players will always want to leave for the PL/Barca/Madrid. PSG have kind of made an exception but realistically we're all expecting Mbappe to go to Spain soon and claim that players like Neymar and Veratti are wasting their careers there. It's hard to see how that perception can change.
 
Ligue 1 is an underrated league. I'd say it's more competitive than the Bundesliga to be honest.
 
Not sure what to make of that. Kind of funnyon one hand but surprised that a Frenchman in France would be following English language football banter to the extent that he'd know the term. Seems a bit sensitive unless it's just some PA in charge of his Twitter. I know English is a second language to many but I thought he'd be caught up in his own football culture. Maybe I'm just ignorant but I neither know nor care what people from other countries say or think about United or the premier league in their own languages and of course I'm not even a player. If I was I'd have even less time to consider such things.
OMG, you're reading what too much into this :lol::lol: You're talking about nonsenses my friend
 
The real question is: why does ligue 1 suck? why haven't teams like Lyon, Monaco and Marseille grown over the last 20 years? Why are their revenues low? Why do their teams have to find cheap talent from Brazil?

Historically the french league is very even, so unlike most leagues it never built juggernauts that had a particularly big aura, ASSE has the most titles with 10. Lyon could have become that if they started their success way sooner instead they finished their period of domination with FFP and needed to build a new stadium and training complex that they paid themselves unlike most current top clubs who got sugar daddied for decades and built great teams and support with it. Monaco is a very small town and market, they have a massive disadvantage when it comes to potential support, Marseille are historically a mess and only got success when they were sugar daddied.

Most top leagues get their money from broadcasting in France despite the fact that football is popular, football isn't the only popular sport, so broadcasters have no reason to pay big money for one sport and the other popular sport, Rugby, is in a totally different world financially which means that prices are dragged down. And in generally it's not part of french culture to spend a fortune on football whether we are talking about merchandising, tickets or TV broadcasts. Which means that Ligue 1 clubs can rarely match wages paid in the other top 5 leagues and it's the main reason why players leave the league, to get more money.

I don't really know what you mean with your last question. A league with less money will try to purchase cheaper players, they are not going to target expensive ones, among the top 5 leagues only La Liga has less foreign players
 


:lol: :lol: :lol:

Honestly, having seen Hazard, Mahrez and Kante succeed one another as PFA player of the year winners coming straight from France we English should have been a bit more humble about French football.
 
Let’s not get carried away. The slogan emerged in leagues where the same team win 8,9 in a row, or 8 out of the last 10 or whatever in PSGs case. France, Germany, Italy have been a waste of time for ages.
 
With Haaland making a mockery of the omega, super duper, defending of the gods notion a very ordinary PL has, can this terminology die now?

City also turning the league into a one horse race because of their resources flies in the face of there being these massive distinctions.

The memes going round are more than apt.
 
We're the farmers!!! WE'RE THE FARMERS!!!
 
With Haaland making a mockery of the omega, super duper, defending of the gods notion a very ordinary PL has, can this terminology die now?

City also turning the league into a one horse race because of their resources flies in the face of there being these massive distinctions.

The memes going round are more than apt.
We have become what we mocked, the Farmer's League has arrived.
 
EPL is the farmers league. Wonder how many points City will get this season. Over 100?
 
A proper farmer's league. The two Manchester teams have won 70% of the league together and only three have won the UCL while two are now also-rans.
 
With Haaland making a mockery of the omega, super duper, defending of the gods notion a very ordinary PL has, can this terminology die now?

City also turning the league into a one horse race because of their resources flies in the face of there being these massive distinctions.

The memes going round are more than apt.
No, city winning is because they spend billions on the best players not because the rest of the league are part time farmers like france