Coupe de France

The French Football Cup (Coupe de France de football) is the most important national men's football competition for club teams in France, alongside the French championship. It is hosted by the national federation FFF. Nowadays, as there is no longer a European Cup Winners' Cup, winning the Coupe de France entitles the winner to participate in the following season's UEFA Europa League, as well as to play in the French Super Cup, the Trophée des Champions.

The French Cup competition was launched in 1917 on the initiative of Henri Delaunay, who envisaged a sporting event for France similar to the one he had come to appreciate in the English FA Cup. The first matches were played on 7 October 1917, and seven months later Olympique de Pantin were the first cup winners. The competition was initially (and again from 1940 to 1945) called Coupe Charles Simon after a player and association official killed in the war, and took its present name in 1919/20. The Coupe de France was the first nationwide inter-association competition in France (see here for details). In this respect, this commonality was in keeping with the social and political leitmotif of the union sacrée that prevailed during the war, i.e. the suspension of domestic political disputes in the face of the defence of the nation. The early winners of the cup competition were therefore usually referred to as the French champions (champion de France). When it was first held, 48 clubs took part, the previous maximum number of 7,656 in the 2012/13 season, which is still valid in 2020/21.

So far, 32 clubs and one regional team have won the competition. The record number of winners is Paris Saint-Germain with 13, followed by Olympique Marseille with ten.

History of the competition

There is a separate article for each cup season, starting with Coupe de France 1917/18.

The creation of the Coupe

On 15 January 1917, the Comité Français Interfédéral, then the governing body of football, decided to put the idea of its general secretary Henri Delaunay into practice by organising a cup competition in which all French teams could take part, regardless of their association. The CFI secured the sponsorship of the publishing house Hachette and its Lectures pour Tous, which, in return for its payment of 5,000 francs per season for an initial period of five years, secured the right to ensure that there would be no other nationwide football competition in France. The sponsor also paid for the replicas of the trophy and the commemorative medals of the finalists. This contractual arrangement had to be taken over by the FFF, which was founded in early 1919 and then replaced the CFI, and it extended the agreement with Hachette for a further five years in 1922.

The first two tournaments took place in the middle of the World War, so that teams from Alsace and parts of Lorraine, which belonged to Germany, as well as teams from the northern and eastern regions of France, which were particularly affected by the war, did not take part. In addition, transport facilities elsewhere were also severely hampered by these circumstances. Numerous footballers were not available to their clubs as soldiers, or were only available to a limited extent. Finally, especially in rural areas, the sports facilities infrastructure was only weakly developed at this time. For this reason, only 48 clubs registered for the season that began on October 7, 1917. One year later, 59 clubs registered, in the first post-war season 114 and in 1920/21 already 202. A four-digit number of participants was reached for the first time in 1950/51.

The Paris region's showdown with the Mediterranean (1917-1932)

In the early years, the competition was dominated by clubs from Paris and the surrounding region: The first six cup winners were all from the region, as was the losing finalist on two occasions. Moreover, from 1921 to 1923 Red Star were the first of only three 'serial' winners to date (2020), with Olympique Pantin, CASG and CAP having previously won the Coupe. In the inaugural season, exactly half of the 48 clubs taking part came from the Paris region, where the finals were played from the outset. Even the referees for the finals came from there without exception up to and including 1929.

Until 1932, the competition developed into a duel between teams from the capital and those from the Mediterranean region, in particular Olympique Marseille (three titles between 1924 and 1927), FC Sète (four final appearances from 1923 to 1930) and SO Montpellier (two finals in 1929 and 1931). Sète in particular, however, also repeatedly clashed with the amateur regulations and were the object of punitive measures by the association on several occasions as a result, which even led to their temporary exclusion from the current competition in the 1922/23 season, although this was later annulled by way of clemency. AS Valentigney (1926) and US Quevilly (1927) were two small-town clubs to reach the finals during this period, each with the financial backing of a major local business.

The first years of professionalism (1932-1945)

By the outbreak of the Second World War (1939) and the occupation of the country by German troops (1940), the clubs that had opted for professional football, which had been introduced in 1932 - and among these, primarily the first-division clubs - were rapidly gaining the upper hand. Only two lower-ranked teams (Racing Roubaix in 1933 and OFC Charleville in 1936) managed to reach a cup final, and in 1944 two regional teams (Équipes Fédérales) made up of 'paid state amateurs' faced each other in the final (see here for details). Otherwise, Olympique Marseille (three titles in five finals) and Racing Paris (four winners) dominated the competition during this period, with FC Sète and Girondins Bordeaux both reaching two finals and winning one of them. From 1940 to 1945, the Coupe de France had to be officially rebranded as the Coupe Charles Simon by order of the government of the "free" part of the country, out of deference to the German occupying forces. The 1944-45 season - the year of France's liberation and the end of the war - marked the transition to a new era in cup history with the first final appearance of Lille OSC, formed by the merger of Olympique Lille, Iris Club Lille and SC Fives.

The decade of the Lille OSC (1945-1955)

By 1949, the northern French side had reached five successive Coupe de France finals, winning three in a row (1946 to 1948). To date (2016), the former is an unmatched record, while the latter has been achieved by only one other club in the competition's 90-year history. Lille OSC also won two other finals (1953 and 1955) at the Olympic Stadium in Colombes. Stade Reims and Racing Strasbourg were two other teams from the northern and eastern provinces respectively, while Racing Lens, US Valenciennes and FC Nancy also reached the final. Red Star and Racing Paris also did so, while the south of the country produced just one cup winner (two successes in the early 1950s for OGC Nice) and three losing finalists (Bordeaux twice, Marseille once).

A time of constant change (1955-1965)

Division 1 was dominated by Stade Reims during this period, while the cup saw eight different winners in ten years. Only UA Sedan-Torcy's 'workers' footballers (with three appearances in the final) and AS Monaco were twice winners. Only two other clubs, Olympique Nîmes and AS Saint-Étienne, took part in two finals each, with only Saint-Étienne winning one. Le Havre AC were the first second-division side to win the French Cup in 1959, and until 2009 (see below) this was the only victory for a lower-tier club.

Saint-Étienne - and Nantes, Marseille, Lyon (1965-1982)

While AS Saint-Étienne and FC Nantes dominated the Division 1 championship, the two clubs also dominated the cup competition - albeit to markedly different degrees - for around a decade and a half. Saint-Étienne won all five finals they reached up to 1977 and reached the final twice more in 1981 and 1982, while Nantes won only the last of four (1979). Olympique Marseille (three finals, all of them victorious) and Olympique Lyon (two wins in four finals) were the other main winners, while AS Monaco and SECBastia (one cup win each in two finals) were also notable, with US Orléans once again reaching a final in 1980.

Paris becomes "cup capital" again (1982-2000)

In 1982 and 1983, Paris Saint-Germain FC, founded just over a decade earlier, brought the Coupe back to the capital after more than 30 years, with three more successes to come between then and 1998. PSG also reached another final in 1985, a feat also achieved in 1990 by the traditional Parisian club of the 1930s to 1950s, renamed Matra Racing 1 after a chequered history. Five other clubs from the rest of the country had won the trophy twice by 2000: FC Nantes, AS Monaco (both in four finals), FC Metz, Girondins Bordeaux and AJ Auxerre (all in their only two finals in that period). Olympique Marseille also reached four finals, but only won the one in 1989. A first in cup history came when fourth-tier Calais RUFC reached the final in 2000, after Olympique Nîmes had made it all the way back in 1996, also a first for a third-tier side, but both failed to make it to the final.

This was also the only year in the Cup's history in which no final was played and there was no winner: In May 1992, the 'Furiani tragedy' occurred just minutes before kick-off of the final round match between SC Bastia and Olympique Marseille; the collapse of an additional stand at Bastia's Stade Armand-Cesari claimed the lives of 18 people and injured more than 2,350. The FFF subsequently abandoned the competition.

At the beginning of the 21st century

As much as the French championship has been dominated by a single club, Olympique Lyon, in the first decade of the 21st century, Lyon have only made two finals appearances in the Coupe de France, winning the trophy in 2008 and 2012. Instead, Paris Saint-Germain and AJ Auxerre alternated on the winners' list between 2003 and 2006. Also notable were FC Sochaux, who waited exactly 70 years to win their second trophy (2007), and En Avant Guingamp, whose name was engraved on the trophy after an all-Breton final (against Stade Rennes) in 2009, only the second second division side to do so - exactly 50 years after Le Havre AC were the first. Guingamp and Rennes met again in 2014, and once again En Avant - now back in the top flight - came out on top. Before Guingamp, FC Lorient had won the Coupe for the first time in 2002.

In the 2009/10 competition, the capital club PSG won another final and reached the final the following year, but lost to OSC Lille. In 2015, PSG secured the title again, as part of the first national quadruple in French football, against now second-tier AJ Auxerre. Paris managed to repeat the win the following year, as well as in 2017 and 2018, before Stade Rennes defeated the Parisians in the 2019 final to win the trophy again after 48 years. After that, however, it was once again the capital club who won the trophy (2020 and 2021). In 2012, US Quevilly, a third-division club, reached the final for the second time in 85 years.

On the occasion of the final match of the hundredth edition of the competition in May 2017, the French Post Office had issued a special stamp.

Game scene from the 1920 final between Le Havre AC and CA Paris


Spectator stands at the 2009 final

Cup Surprises

The most frequently cited surprise in the cup's long history came on 4 February 1957 in Toulouse, where SCU El Biar, a lowly amateur side from the Algerian Division d'Honneur, faced Stade de Reims in the last 32. Although El Biar had already eliminated a second-division side, AS Aix, in the previous round, Reims were of a completely different calibre. Six months earlier, they had narrowly beaten the Royal Madrilenians in their first-ever European Champions Cup final and, with the exception of Just Fontaine, who was absent for military service, were at their best against the underdogs. Leading 1-0 after four minutes through a free-kick from their manager Guy Buffard (himself a member of Stade's Allez Reims supporters' club), El Biar went 2-0 up before the end of the first half through Roland Almodovar, then withstood a 50-minute onslaught from the favourites without conceding a goal, thanks to their commitment, good fortune and a goalkeeper by the name of Paul Benoît who, on the day, went above and beyond. El Biar were eliminated in the round of 16, but that one cup tie and its valiant protagonists will be remembered in France decades later as VfB Eppingen are in Germany.

Since 1980, US Montagnarde have reached the main round ten times, and in 2002 they became the first sixth-division side to reach the last 16. In 1996, CS Blénod became the first fifth-division club to knock two first-division teams out of the competition. Two other amateur clubs - often referred to as petits poucets - who have been particularly successful in holding off the big boys have also made lasting cup history:

US Quevilly, from the immediate vicinity of Rouen, had even reached the final against Olympique Marseille in 1927 - but there were no paid footballers then, so the eternal motif of the cup drama ("David against Goliath") was missing; in 1968, however, Quevilly first knocked out Olympique Lyon and only finally succumbed to Girondins de Bordeaux in the semi-finals, and only after extra time. The fourth-division club did a similar thing in 2010, when they were again eliminated in the semi-finals after defeating Ligue 1 sides Stade Rennes and US Boulogne. In 2012, Quevilly's cup run took them all the way to the final for the second time, with the now third-division Normans losing out to Olympique Lyon in the process, after previous victories over Marseille and Rennes.

Fourth-tier Calais RUFC went all the way to the final in 2000 after defeating AS Cannes, Racing Strasbourg and Girondins Bordeaux, losing 2-1 to FC Nantes on a last-gasp penalty. CRUFC also reached the quarter-finals in 2006 and the last 16 in 2007, still in the fourth division.

The most recent big surprises have come from two fifth-division clubs (CFA2), both of whom reached the quarter-finals: US Jeanne d'Arc Carquefou in 2007/08, who knocked out AS Nancy and Olympique Marseille before losing 1-0 to Paris Saint-Germain, and SO Chambéry in 2010/11, who beat three Ligue 1 clubs in a row - AS Monaco, Stade Brest and FC Sochaux.
In the centenary year of the "Vieille Dame" ("Old Lady"),
France Football magazine has paid detailed tribute to the cup run of twenty clubs it considers to be the most outstanding surprises. These are, in chronological order, Racing Roubaix in 1933, US Vésinet in 1946 - this club from the western periphery of Paris had already been involved in the first Cup season in 1917/18 as Margarita Club Vésinet -, UA Sedan-Torcy in 1950, SCU El Biar in 1957, AS Gardanne in 1960, CS Blénod and Olympique Nîmes 1996, Clermont Foot 1997, FC Bourg-Péronnas 1998, Calais RUFC 2000, Amiens SC 2001, FC Libourne-Saint-Seurin 2002, SC Schiltigheim 2003, Aviron Bayonne and ESA Brive 2004, FC Montceau 2007, USJA Carquefou 2008, SO Chambéry 2011, US Quevilly 2012 and AS Cannes 2014. The fact that no amateur club was included in the list for three and a half decades from 1960 is explained by the fact that there were first and second legs until 1988, which favoured the higher-ranked clubs, as did the fact that home advantage for lower-ranked clubs was not introduced until 1989.

Overall, in the recent past, amateur teams - that is, clubs competing in the fourth division or below these days - have been relatively well-represented among the last 32 teams, as the following list shows.

League level	Sixteenth finalistsfrom League(a)	Average1998/99 to2007/08	Season2008/09	Season2009/10	Season2010/11	Season2011/12	Season2012/13	Season2013/14	Season2014/15	Season2015/16	Season2016/17	Season2017/18	Season2018/19	Season2019/20	Average2008/09 to2019/20	Season2020/21
	Ligue 1	13	14	15	10(b)	13	14	14	12	17	15	14	14	15	< 14	12(c)
	Ligue 2	< 08	09	06	10	07	05	07	06	05	04	07	04	04	> 06	03(c)
	National	< 04	02	03	02	05	04	01	05	02	07	04	04	02	> 03	03
	CFA	> 04	05	06	06	05	05	07	06	06	03	04	07	06	< 06	09
	CFA 2	> 02	00	02	03	02	02	03	03	02	02	03	01	04	> 02	03
6+	DH and lower	< 01	02	00	01	00	02	00	00	00	01	00	02	01	< 01	02

The French Football Federation even has its own cash prize system for successful amateur clubs, the Tableau d'honneur - Caisse d'Épargne (from 2012 with PMU as the main sponsor) or Classement des Petits Poucets.

The players from El Biar before their sensational success.