Comments on: All Hell Breaks Loose As Ligue 1 Wraps Up

By: Inara

Inara — Mon, 19 May 2008 15:10:20 +0000

It’s amazing that a country like France has such a poor stadium situation. Even renovating them – forget building new ones – is a pain in the ass.

By: set

set — Mon, 19 May 2008 10:39:41 +0000

There might be room for a very rich investor building a club from “scratch” in Paris.. 10 million people live there damn it.

By: Shazback

Shazback — Mon, 19 May 2008 10:23:19 +0000

That’s not at all true, Cyril… Back in the late 80s there were (for instance) two big clubs in Paris : Matra Racing and Paris Saint-Germain. Or even the 70s, with Paris FC and Paris Saint-Germain…

The main reason why there’s only one club per town is because most french clubs loan stadia from the town, be they in Ligue 1 or in some lowly amateur league. This means that clubs can’t improve their stadia, and are generally restricted to playing in a pretty small stadium if they’re not the biggest club in town. For instance, Matra Racing played in the Stade Olympique Yves-du-Manoir, and briefly managed to co-loan the Parc des Princes with PSG, allowing them to finally get over the 7,000 limit of the old stadium. But since they didn’t own their stadium, as soon as they had bad sporting results, they reverted to Yves-du-Manoir because it was less expensive. But that also meant less media exposition, etc… Look at a town like London, and how many stadia it has. And then look at Paris. That’s part of why there’s only one “big” club in each town : there’s only one decent stadium, and no club-owned stadiums.

By: Cyril

Cyril — Mon, 19 May 2008 01:32:54 +0000

Well… Unless PSG and its infamous “supporters” go down, we won’t have another parisian team in the top flight: from what I remember, every city is limited to one club per division, which is why the French don’t really have derby games…

By: Inara

Inara — Sun, 18 May 2008 23:19:55 +0000

There are other football clubs in Paris, but as of right now, they are amateur clubs. Paris doesn’t even have a L2 club at the moment, so that’s what I meant. Paris FC and Creteil are in National (3rd division) while Red Star and Racing are in CFA (4th division).

In the long run, they might have a bright future, but until they get there, without PSG (who are still Paris’s most well supported club), the void of a topflight team will be quite significant.

By: Magnusson

Magnusson — Sun, 18 May 2008 23:04:46 +0000

Not to nitpick on such a great article but paris has a lot more Professional football clubs than just paris Sg. You have Paris FC that’s going up and down from national, Creteil Lusitanos who are doing great things, Red Star 93 who’s team was promised to a bright future when Steve marlet was still there. And countless other clubs. Racing metro can’t be considered professional anymore but with all the millions their rugby section just received, they’re bound to rise from the ashes of cfa again.

And how many blogs are you writing for these days, 5?