Football Cities: Paris
Last time on our football cities series we looked at another European capital city in Prague, but this week we’re going a little closer to home, just over the channel in fact, to the city of love, Paris.
Whilst French football has had a very successful 30 years on the international stage, it’s club sides have failed to consistently produce any meaningful runs at major European silverware, namely the Champions League.
The French teams have a habit of always being the bridesmaid and never the bride. Between the Europa League and the Champions League, French clubs have been to 12 finals but only won one of them which came in 1993 when Marseille beat AC Milan in the European Cup.
France’s best hope of repeating that feat, now lie with the country’s richest club and our first featured team today, Paris Saint-Germain. The French giants are the only other team from the country to have won a European competition, picking up the UEFA Cup Winners’ Cup in 1996 and although they were decorated before 2011, the arrival of Qatar Sports Investments elevated the club into a whole new stratosphere.
Since the takeover, PSG have won 7 league titles, 6 Coupe de France’s and 6 Coupe de la Ligue’s. Chairman Nasser Al-Khelaifi boldly promised he would turn them into the biggest club in the country and he may have delivered on that but the club is yet to claim the biggest prize of all, the Champions League. They came close in 2020, making the final for the first time but ultimately lost to a very talented Bayern Munich side 1-0.
To make matters worse, PSG let their manager Thomas Tuchel go, only so he could win the Champions League with Chelsea last year. The Red and Blues are still yet to be France’s most successful club as well after losing out on the title to Lille last year, Saint Etienne remain top of the pile with 10 league titles, one more than PSG.
Mauricio Pochettino’s side look to be running away with the league this season and have formed a team of stars with Lionel Messi, Neymar and Kylian Mbappe, but ultimately although they may be the biggest side from the capital they are one of the newest only being founded in 1970. The next closest team to them by division is Paris FC who were formed a year earlier in 1969 and compete in Ligue 2.
In fact, the Blues were actually merged with Stade Saint-Germain to create PSG in 1970 but ended up splitting off as their own club again just two years later in 1972. They have never managed to even come close to the same level of success as their city rivals though, spending more than 35 years of their 53 year existence as a semi-professional or amateur outfit.
The club have never lifted any silverware of note and have only been in the second tier since 2015, following a second place finish in the Championnat National (France’s third tier). They finished 5th last season, flirting with promotion to the top flight, but still have a long way to go to catch their city rivals despite the recent investment in the club from the Kingdom of Bahrain. The biggest success of the club though is its ability to provide a springboard for young players to build their career. The likes of Mamadou Sakho, Gabriel Obertan and Ibrahima Konate have all spent time in the youth setup and gone on to impress elsewhere.
Elsewhere in the city, one of the oldest clubs Red Star FC, is now competing in the third tier of French football. Despite that and the fact the club has spent most of its history semi-professional, they have an incredibly rich history. They were formed in 1897 by football legend Jules Rimet (of World Cup and Three Lions fame) and were founding members of Ligue 1, spending 19 years in the top flight.
The Green and Whites have won five Coupe de France titles and similarly to St Pauli, who we covered before on our Hamburg instalment of football cities, they have an affinity for left-wing politics and social activism that gives them an incredibly passionate fan base. On top of all that, the club is now managed by former Newcastle man, Habib Beye.
Some other clubs worth mentioning are Standard Athletic Club, Olympique de Paris and Racing Club de France Football. Standard is a British social club in Paris who were professional until 1937 but helped to found the Coupe de France in 1917. They also represented France in the 1900 Olympics in a cricket match.
Olympique de Paris were only in existence for 31 years and were dissolved in 1926 when they merged with Red Star, but in their short time as a club they won the Coupe de France in 1918. Last but not least are Racing Club who are one of the oldest clubs in French football having been founded as far back as 1882. They compete in the fifth tier of French football now but managed to win Ligue 1 in 1936 and have clinched five Coupe de France titles. The club also still holds the record for the most goals scored in a 38 match Ligue 1 season with 118 in the 1959/60 season.
So whilst it might seem like Paris is a one club city, the footballing history in the capital goes way beyond the vast riches of Paris Saint-Germain.