MySQL implements language-specific collations for the utf8 character set only if the ordering with utf8_unicode_ci does not work well for a language. For example, utf8_unicode_ci works fine for German dictionary order and French, so there is no need to create special utf8 collations.
utf8_general_ci also is satisfactory for both German and French, except that “ß” is equal to “s”, and not to “ss”. If this is acceptable for your application, you should use utf8_general_ci because it is faster. Otherwise, use utf8_unicode_ci because it is more accurate.
