PSG request to move match before Liverpool tie
PSG ask for their top-of-the-table Ligue 1 match against Lens to be postponed in order to help them for their Champions League quarter-final against Liverpool.
Luis Enrique's PSG knocked Liverpool out of the Champions League last season [Getty Images] The Ligue de Football Professionel (LFP) have confirmed they have received a request from Paris Saint-Germain to postpone their Ligue 1 game against RC Lens. PSG are scheduled to visit Lens in a top-of-the-table encounter on Saturday 11 April, with the fixture coming in between both legs of their Champions League quarter-final against Liverpool. Arne Slot's side visit the Parc des Princes on Wednesday, 8 April, with the return leg set for Anfield on Tuesday ,14 April.
Liverpool also have a Premier League match scheduled for 11 April against Fulham at Anfield. In response to PSG's request, Lens - who are chasing a first league title since 1998 - issued a statement saying they are strongly against the "troubling sentiment" if the fixture was moved to a later date, adding their domestic league risks being "gradually relegated to the status of an adjustment variable at the whim of the European imperatives of some". "Beyond this specific case, the question raised is a more fundamental one: that of the respect due to the competition itself," the club's statement continued.
"For one is entitled to wonder when, on its own soil, the league sometimes seems to be relegated to second place behind other ambitions, however legitimate they may be. " Lens currently trail PSG by one point in Ligue 1, and head coach Pierre Sage said after their 5-1 victory over Angers on Sunday that his side did not agree with a postponement. In PSG's previous Champions League tie against Chelsea, Luis Enrique's side had the weekend off in between the two legs as their game against Nantes was postponed after a similar request.
PSG won 8-2 on aggregate. Ultimately, the final call is with the LFP, and their stance is they will look to benefit French clubs that are playing in Europe. The LFP also confirmed Strasbourg have requested to have their league game at Brest on that same weekend postponed as it comes in between their Conference League games against Mainz.