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France football Odds

France football Odds

French Football

The French leagues have a traditional European football style pyramid system with promotion and relegation happening throughout. There are currently just two fully professional leagues in France, Ligue 1, and Ligue 2 and whilst teams in the 3rd division, The Championnat National, are allowed to be professional only 6 currently are.

The national cup competition of France is the Coupe de France that features teams from throughout the pyramid system and there is also the Trophee des Champions which features the winners of Serie A and the Coupe de France. There is also the Coupe de la Ligue which features only professional teams.

Ligue 1 and Ligue 2 – Promotion and Relegation

Ligue 1 has 20 teams with the bottom two teams being automatically relegated to Ligue 2. The 3rd bottom team must enter a relegation playoff in order to attempt to stay in the top division. This playoff is a two-legged tie between themselves and the team that comes through the semi final of the promotion playoff in Ligue 2.

Ligue 2 contains 22 teams, the top two of which are automatically promoted to Ligue 1, whilst 3rd, 4th and 5th place enter the promotion playoffs. The 4th placed team play the 5th placed at home in a one-off quarterfinal tie with the winner advancing to play the 3rd placed team away in the semi-final. The winner of the semi-final plays the aforementioned Ligue 1 team over two legs to determine who plays in France’s top tier the next season.

The bottom two from Ligue 2 are automatically relegated to the Championnat National, whilst the 3rd bottom team enters a relegation playoff. This happens much like the Ligue 1 relegation playoff, with the 3rd bottom team playing the team that comes through the semi-final of the 3rd tiers playoffs.

European Qualification

Since the EUFA coefficients rankings put France only 5th, they have less Champions League places than others with just the top 2 qualifying automatically for the group stage. The 3rd placed team enters the third qualifying round of the Champions League.

There are also 3 Europa League places available, with the 4th placed team qualifying automatically for the group stage. The other two places include entering into the qualifying stages of the competition and are available to the winners of the two cup competitions, Coupe de France, and Coupe de la Ligue. If the winners of these are already qualified, then they will go to the 5th and 6th placed teams, respectively.

Coupe de France

The Coupe de France is the premier cup competition in France. Every team in France can enter and the draw is not seeded, although the pro clubs do enter at a later stage. Around 8,000 clubs enter in total each year.

PSG hold the record for the most wins with 13 ahead of second placed Marseille with 10.

Ligue 1

Ligue 1 is one the oldest leagues in the world and was founded in 1932. PSG have dominated it in recent years, winning 7 of the last 8 editions to take their total tally to 9. However, Saint-Etienne still hold the record for wins with 10.