ROUND · every league

RUND LIGUE 1

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History

LIGUE 1 · FOUNDED 1932

French professional football started late and against the wishes of much of the sport’s own establishment. What it has always produced is players: more of the world game’s talent comes through France than through anywhere else in Europe.

The moments

1. 1932

   Twenty clubs, two groups

   The first professional season was played in two groups of ten with a final between the winners. Olympique Lillois beat Cannes 4–3 to become the first champions of France.

2. 1956

   Reims and the first European Cup final

   Stade de Reims, the outstanding French side of the decade, lost the first European Cup final to Real Madrid 4–3 after leading twice. Raymond Kopa joined Madrid that summer.

3. 1993

   The best and the worst year

   Marseille became the first — and still the only — French club to win the European Cup, and were then found to have fixed a league match against Valenciennes days before the final. They were stripped of the French title and relegated.

4. 1995

   Nantes go thirty-two without losing

   Nantes were unbeaten in their first thirty-two league matches of the season and won the title by a distance. It is still the French record, and it was done with a side that had come up through their own academy.

5. 2002

   Lyon begin

   Olympique Lyonnais won the first of seven consecutive titles, a run no French club had come close to, built on selling one star every summer and finding the next one.

6. 2011

   Paris is bought

   Qatar Sports Investments took over Paris Saint-Germain, a club that had won one league title in its history. The competitive shape of the division has been argued about ever since.

7. 2012

   Montpellier

   Montpellier, with the smallest budget of the title contenders and Olivier Giroud up front, won the league ahead of a Paris side already spending heavily.

8. 2017

   Monaco, and a nineteen-year-old

   Monaco scored a hundred and seven league goals and took the title from Paris with a team including Kylian Mbappé, Bernardo Silva and Thomas Lemar, all sold within two summers.

9. 2020

   The season that was not finished

   France cancelled its season outright in April rather than resume it, the only big European league to do so. The table was settled on points per game and Paris were declared champions.

10. 2022

    Paris pass Saint-Étienne

    PSG won a tenth title and then an eleventh, moving ahead of Saint-Étienne’s ten, which had stood as the French record since 1981.

Records that stand

Roll of honour

Lyon’s seven consecutive titles between 2002 and 2008 are the longest run in French football.