Ligue 1 Correct Score Stats: The Fall of the French 0-0

Ask most bettors about French football and they will describe a league of tight, low-scoring draws. That reputation was earned, but the record of 7,656 Ligue 1 matches from 2005/06 to 2025/26 says it has gone stale. The reasoning behind my correct score picks for today starts with base rates like these, so I want them on the table first.

The headline is simple. The goalless draw averaged 12.1% over the first five seasons in the record and 6.9% over the last five, while 1-1 has held its place as the most common score throughout. The more useful finding is that the Over 2.5 price sorts 0-0 risk sharply, from 4.0% in the shortest band to 12.8% in the longest.

§ 1The 0-0 share has drifted down season after season

This chart tracks the two scores that define a cagey league. The 0-0 line peaked at 14.7% in 2007/08 and hit its low of 4.6% in 2024/25, before settling at 7.8% in 2025/26. The 1-0 line is noisier: a high of 15.8% in 2006/07, a trough of 5.8% in 2020/21 and a rebound to 12.1% in 2025/26.

Both low-scoring results fell over the same stretch. To me, that points to rising goals across the league rather than a quirk of draws alone.

Single seasons swing hard, so I never price a 0-0 from last season's figure alone. The trend is the signal and any one year is mostly noise around it. The record for 2019/20 is also incomplete, so that point rests on fewer matches.

§ 2More goals per game in every era, fewer 0-0s

Grouping seasons smooths out the noise. Goals per game climbed in every era, from 2.23 in 2005/06–2008/09 to 2.82 in 2021/22–2025/26. Across the same span the 0-0 share fell from 12.9% to 6.9%, so the goalless draw now lands roughly half as often as it did.

The 1-1 is the quieter story. It slipped from 13.3% to 11.6%, with a peak of 14.5% in 2009/10–2012/13, yet it stayed the top score in every era. For a correct score bettor that resilience matters more than the 0-0's decline. The most likely single score has barely moved, even as the goal environment changed around it.

§ 3Long Over 2.5 prices push the 0-0 rate up

This is the chart I use most. Each bar is a band of pre-match Over 2.5 prices, and the 0-0 rate climbs steadily as that price lengthens. When Over 2.5 was under 1.70 (982 matches), only 4.0% finished goalless. At 2.40 and up (827 matches) the rate was 12.8%, a fair price of 7.81.

The middle band, 1.90–2.09 across 1,486 matches, sits at 7.4%. The busiest band, 2.10–2.39 with 3,299 matches, returned 10.8%.

My reading is that the totals market already carries most of what I need to know about a 0-0. In a long-priced match the goalless draw landed about three times as often as in a short-priced one. That makes a single league-wide 0-0 price the wrong starting point for almost every individual game.

§ 4Break-even prices for Ligue 1's most common scores

Fair odds here are simply 1 divided by how often each score landed. 1-1 came in 994 times, a share of 13.0% and a fair price of 7.70. 1-0 follows at 11.2% (8.95), then 0-0 at 8.8% (11.31). Further down, 2-1 sits at 11.74, 2-0 at 12.39, 0-1 at 13.25 and 1-2 at 15.47.

The main caveat is that these are break-even prices drawn from the past, not forecasts. Correct score books carry wide margins, so quoted odds usually sit well below these figures. Promotion, relegation and shifting club strength also keep changing the mix from year to year.

The 95% ranges are narrow, 12.2%–13.8% for 1-1, so the ordering at the top is reliable. The 0-0 figure, though, blends a very different past with a leaner present. On modern Ligue 1 I treat 11.31 as too short a fair price for the goalless draw, not as a target.

Compiled byPriya Nadkarni

I'm Priya Nadkarni, based in San Diego, and I write the correct score predictions at fixed-match.tips — built on goal distributions and game state, not on guessing a tidy final number.

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