Ligue 1

Ligue 1 [liːgˈœ̃] is the highest division in French men's football; from 1932 to 2002 it was called Division 1 or Première Division (D1). It was a professional league from its inception. There have been French championships since 1894, but it is only since 1932 that winning the championship (Championnat de France) counts as an official title.

In a country where the sport still lagged behind cycling, boules and rugby in terms of popularity until the last third of the 20th century, professional football took a long time to become one of the five strongest leagues in Europe at the turn of the millennium. Today, top-level football in France is much more globalised and therefore more confusable, while still retaining some very 'French' characteristics (see below).

Both non-French and country-specific framework conditions, organisational forms and structures have contributed to this development, which have shaped the face of French football in the roughly 85 years of league history to date - far beyond its three "big names" Kopa, Platini and Zidane and initial, insular successes (at the end of the 1950s and in the 1980s) - and which are presented here en détail.

Note: Many French clubs changed their name during this period; the name used here is always the one in force at the time of their mention.

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The late onset: causes

From the first national championships (1894, still limited to Paris) to the formation of a uniform league covering the entire country took just under four decades, during which championships and cup competitions were nevertheless already being played. There are a number of reasons for this long start-up period - at least in comparison with the "football motherland" England - some of which are typical of the early history of football throughout Europe, but some of which are linked to specifically French conditions. One of the main reasons was the diversity of associations (or, to put it in negative terms, the organisational fragmentation) of French sport until after the First World War: a single association, the Union des sociétés françaises de sports athlétiques (USFSA), existed only from 1887 to 1905; between 1905 and 1919, on the other hand, there were up to five competing associations in which football clubs were organised and determined their respective champions (more details here). Although they created a common umbrella organisation (Comité Français Interfédéral, CFI) in 1908, it was not until 1913 that all the footballing organisations had joined; and in 1914, the First World War interrupted all unification efforts for more than four years before these efforts led to the creation of the Fédération Française de Football Association (FFFA, later simply FFF) in 1919.

However, this did not pave the way for a nationwide professional league, as the CFI had reached an agreement with the publisher Édition Hachette that initially prevented this from happening: Hachette sponsored the national cup competition, the Coupe de France, which had been launched in 1917/18, to the tune of 5,000 francs a year, and in return had secured the right to ensure that no other nationwide competition could be staged until 1928. In addition, the start of the league was delayed in the years that followed, partly due to the effects of the Great Depression and the disputes between supporters and opponents of the professionalisation of the sport.

Emergence of a disguised professionalism

Professionalisation in football was not an entirely new issue in France. France international goalkeeper Pierre Chayriguès, for example, as he himself confessed in the late 1920s, received 500 francs for joining Red Star Paris in 1911 and subsequently earned a monthly fix of FF 400, plus win bonuses of FF 50 each. After international matches, he regularly collected a four-figure sum from the FFFA office, which the federation - whose president Jules Rimet was an avowed champion of amateurism - declared as 'travel expenses', 'compensation for loss of earnings' or 'medical expenses'. That's why Chayriguès could afford to turn down a lucrative offer from Tottenham Hotspur to play in England in 1913 (there was talk of 25,000 FF).

The issue only became virulent after the First World War, however, because from 1919 onwards the FFFA was able to enforce a standardisation in favour of amateurism, whereas until 1914/18 the associations had dealt with this issue with varying degrees of "generosity". This led to various forms of clandestine professionalism at a number of clubs, as had existed in Germany before the introduction of the Bundesliga. Some clubs were supported by local companies that kept a company sports club and were thus able to offer jobs or direct payments (such as the car manufacturer Peugeot in Sochaux, the retail chain Casino in Saint-Étienne or the champagne producer Pommery & Greno in Reims).

Other clubs lured courted players with the livelihood of taking over a small business: what used to be the Lotto-Toto ticket office in Germany was often a bar-tabac in France. Individual popular players also marketed their fame early on; for example, national players Eugène Maës and Henri Bard advertised football boots bearing their names. At some clubs, payments to players were an open secret in the 1920s. Olympique Marseille, for example, attracted French and foreign internationals season after season, not just because of the pleasant Mediterranean climate; after 1924, Red Star Paris had two players who had just won the Olympics with Uruguay; Sports Olympiques Montpelliérains had four well-known players from Switzerland and Yugoslavia in its ranks in 1929; FC Sète added a Hungarian, an Algerian and another Serbian international to the "foreigner contingent" in its squad (three British and one Yugoslavian) in 1930 ...

However, the FFFA found it difficult to prove this disguised professionalism, which the French call l'amateurisme marron (roughly translating as 'tricky amateurism'): In 1923, for example, it excluded FC Cette (now Sète) from the cup competition because its Swiss player Georges Kramer had been a resident of France for less than six months - but another federation body ruled months later by a majority vote that this did not justify the harsh punishment (which is why Sète were even allowed to make up the missed cup rounds; see here for details). Inevitably, Sète's long-serving president Georges Bayrou was one of the most adamant advocates of the introduction of an official professional players' league, which he repeatedly promoted in the press and at all levels of the federation.

So if the FFFA could not prevent players being paid, its interest had to be in steering this development in an orderly fashion and thereby controlling it. Unlike the German Football Association, for example, which also had to deal with this schism on a massive scale in 1929/30 ("Schalke case", founding of the German Professional Football Association), the French association then decided relatively quickly to take an offensive approach to bogus amateurism.

The "Coupe Sochaux"

FC Sochaux, of all clubs, had only just been founded and played a decisive role in the introduction of a national league: in 1930, with the approval of the FFF, the club's sponsor donated a cup, the Coupe Sochaux, and invited not only FC Sochaux but also the seven supposedly strongest teams to take part in this competition, which was largely played in league format: two each from the north (Lille Olympique, RC Roubaix), south (Olympique Marseille, FC Sète) and Paris (Red Star, Club Français), and one from the east (FC Mulhouse). This competition ended in 1931 with the hosts beating Lille 6-1 in the final. The following year (1931/32) the competition was repeated, this time with 20 participants (winner: FC Mulhouse, 4-2 against Stade Français Paris), and the public response illustrated the great interest in a top national division.

The "zero hour"

On 16 January 1932, a commission set up twelve months earlier by the FFF under Jean Bernard-Lévy decided on the final arrangements for professional football in France. Among other things, a professional players' statute was adopted, according to which players could be paid a maximum of 2,000 old francs a month. Two supervisory bodies were also created: One was responsible for player and contract issues; it was chaired by former international and journalist Gabriel Hanot. The second (Groupement des Clubs Professionnels), chaired by Emmanuel Gambardella, who later became president of the association (from 1949), was responsible for league operations and the championship, and included several club representatives with voting rights.

The early years (1932-1939)

The 1932/33 season (on 11 September 1932 to be precise) saw the start of professional football in France. For this purpose, the participating clubs had to - and still have to today - adopt a professional statute. Twenty clubs were admitted to this first season in 1932 and are thus considered the founding members of the league. They were divided into two playing divisions, but not along regional lines; instead, clubs from all over the national territory played in each group.

Assigned to Group A were: FC Hyères, Olympique Lillois, Olympique Marseille, FC Mulhouse, SC Nîmes, OGC Nice, Excelsior AC Roubaix, FC Sète and from Paris Racing Club and Club Français.
In Group B played: Olympique Alésien, Olympique Antibes, AS Cannes, SC Fivois, FC Metz, Sports Olympiques Montpelliérains, Stade Rennais UC, FC Sochaux-Montbéliard and from Paris Red Star Olympique and Cercle Athlétique.

The two group winners (Lille Olympique and Olympique Antibes) were to play in a final to determine the first French champion - but Lille won that against AS Cannes, the runners-up in Group B, because Antibes were convicted of bribing an opponent and demoted to second place. At the end of the first season, six clubs were relegated (Club Français, Red Star, Hyères, Metz, Mulhouse and Alès) and none joined - the D1 was temporarily reduced to 14 teams and henceforth played out in only one group.

In the pre-war seasons until 1938/39 the league initially suffered from some "teething troubles". The playing mode was changed frequently (see below), a second league was introduced in 1933 and a third, albeit non-professional, league in 1936. Nine clubs took over economically and were forced to abandon professional football, at least temporarily, after a short time (1934 OGC Nice, US Suisse Paris, FC Lyon; 1935 US Tourcoing, FC Hispano-Bastidien Bordeaux, SC Nîmes, Club Français, US Saint-Servan-Saint-Malo; 1936 AS Villeurbanne).

On the other hand, the number of professional clubs in D1 and D2 increased from 20 (1932/33) to 34 (1935/36) and 37 (1938/39), and French football attracted players from many other countries, which undoubtedly benefited its quality: in 1933/34, for example, there were thirteen Austrians, ten Englishmen, seven Hungarians, five Scots and five Germans, among others, were under contract in France's elite division - with an upward trend, which led to the restriction of the maximum number of foreigners eligible to play to two per team in 1938 (see also below). At this time there was no club that clearly dominated the league; rather, five clubs shared the seven league titles, with FC Sochaux and FC Sète each winning twice, and Olympique Marseille, Lille Olympique and Racing Club each winning once.