The 2022-2023 financial year will be an opportunity to celebrate the ninetieth anniversary of the French professional championship. If the inaugural season of 1933 was won by Olympique Lillois, nine decades later, the city of Lille still reigns among provincial towns.
In France, the rule of “One club per city”
Unlike European neighbors who often have several major professional clubs in the same city (Madrid, Milan, London, Istanbul, Glasgow, etc.), in France the situation is different. Indeed, while the municipalities were one of the major sponsors of the clubs from the 1960s, the regulations of the French Football Federation indicated that a city of less than 100,000 inhabitants could not have two professional clubs. This rule was worth until the obligations of privatization of the beginnings of 2000. Thus, by agglomeration the seasons within the elite that each city could count, Lille finds itself in second position. Behind Paris and its half-dozen clubs, but ahead of Marseille.
Ranking of cities with more than 50 D1/L1 seasons (all clubs combined)
- Paris, 118 seasons in 2022-2023: Paris Saint-Germain (51), RC Paris (30), Red Star (16), Stade Français (15), Paris FC (3), CA Paris (2), French Club (1)
- Lille, 77 seasons: LOSC Lille (63), Olympique Lille (7), SC Fives (7)
- Marseilles, 73 seasons (Olympic Marseille)
- Bordeaux, 69 seasons (Girondins of Bordeaux)
- Saint-Etienne, 69 seasons (AS Saint-Etienne)
- Rennes, 66 seasons (Stade Rennais FC)
- Sochaux, 66 seasons (FC Sochaux-Montbeliard)
- Lyon, 65 seasons: Olympique Lyonnais (64) and LOU (1)
- Monaco, 64 seasons (AS Monaco)
- Nice, 64 seasons (OGC Nice)
- Metz, 63 seasons (FC Metz)
- Strasbourg, 62 seasons (RC Strasbourg)
- Lens, 61 seasons (RC Lens)
- Nantes, 55 seasons (FC Nantes)
The administrative attachment of the Fives district to the city of Lille was made in 1858, so we can consider that the two founding clubs of LOSC belong to this same city. If the merger (rather than the absorption) removes a title from the charts, at least it allows us to be enthroned at the top of the provincial towns of French football.
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