Newcastle United winger Allan Saint-Maximin has taken a dig at the defensive game of many French teams.
Saint-Maximin left Nice last summer for Newcastle.
He told France Football: "It's closed, the teams are really padlocked. I wouldn't say they are cowards, but it's more locked (than the Premier League).
"When I played with a lot of daring but necessarily also waste, sometimes there was a discrepancy with the conservative side of the game.
"Now, if I had better stats, no one would have found fault with my dribbles. This is where the debate comes from."