Coupe de la Ligue — French professional football league cup

The FFF introduced the competition in 1991 - it is now organised by the Ligue de Football Professionnel (LFP) - after a biennial predecessor, the Coupe de l'été (Summer Cup), had been held in the early 1980s. However, the League Cup was initially a bit of a shadowy existence during the summer break, with the larger clubs either not taking part or only sending their reserve teams. The Coupe de la Ligue only gained in sporting value when victory in this competition was upgraded to include qualification for the UEFA Cup (1994/95). At least the finals (now regularly played at the Stade de France) also attract large crowds: in 2007, the previous record (78,721 in 2005) was beaten by 79,702 paying spectators.

In the first rounds, the third and second division clubs were initially among themselves, while the first division clubs did not intervene until the round of the last 32 teams, which then left 12 lower division teams. Up to and including the quarter-finals, the League Cup was held before the winter break.
Otherwise, the League Cup has been played according to the "classic" cup format, which means in particular that from the round of 16 onwards, the fixtures are drawn from all the clubs still in the competition, without any seedings or pre-sorting, and only one match is played, at the end of which there must be a winner (even if it is through extra time and penalties) who then qualifies for the next round, while the loser is eliminated. Home advantage will also be determined by drawing lots for each match.

However, the president of the LFP, Frédéric Thiriez, had already brought up some changes to the mode in 2006: according to this, four clubs were to be seeded as "group heads" in future, after which it would be possible to dispense with draws altogether from the second round onwards, because - similar to World Cup finals - all matches would be fixed up to the semi-finals. Thieriez's proposal to give the two clubs directly qualified for the Champions League the bonus of not having to enter the competition until the round of 16 has been practised since 2007, although it too had met with fierce criticism in France, and not just from the "small" clubs.