Olympique Valence
Olympique de Valence is a French football club from Valence , which emerged in 2014 from AS Valence , a successor to the traditional Association Sportive d'Origine Arménienne (ASOA) de Valence .
history
The story of Olympique Valence is essentially the story of two competing local clubs that shared the Stade de la Palla for decades . Olympique has kept the club colors of its predecessor (red and white); the fighting team plays in the Stade Georges-Pompidou , which has a capacity of 14,000 spectators.
Valence FC
In the mid-1920s, the music and gymnastics club Alliance Valentinoise founded a football division called Stade Valentinois , which in 1930 joined the Valence Sportif club. In 1946, the footballers started their own business as the Football Club de Valence . After the FC had failed several times to rise to the top regional division, the Division d'Honneur , he merged in 1951 with a club from La Voulte-sur-Rhône , who played in the top national amateur league. This club Sportif La Voulte Valence existed until 1961, then the FCV played independently again in lower departmental leagues.
1973 succeeded for the first time promotion to the top pure amateur league (then the third highest league level), in which the FC competed for two seasons. He returned there in 1981, made it into the main cup in both 1980 and 1981 and even rose to the second division in 1984 , which at that time was held in two seasons and was open to professional and amateur teams. The team stayed in it only for this one season , in which they succeeded in the national cup by eliminating Olympique Marseille and advancing to the round of 16. After the attempted return to Division 2 failed several times in the following years , FC joined forces with local rivals USJOA in 1992 , who had just succeeded in this promotion (see the section below) .
ASOA Valence
The club was founded in the early 1920s under the name Union Sportive de la Jeunesse d'Origine Arménienne (USJOA) by Armenian refugees who had settled in large numbers in Valence and the surrounding area after the genocide of their ethnic group in 1915/1916 . For decades, a high-ranking dignitary of the city's Armenian parish regularly blessed the lawn of the Stade de la Palla . For the first time in the 1977/78 season, the club's footballers played at the same level as their local competitor FC, but only for one season. From 1984, however, the USJOA rose seven times in eight years to a league level and played from 1992 - the year of the merger with FC Valence - in the second division. The club finished this promotion season in a respectable fifth place in its group. Whether he had already officially adopted the name Association Sportive d'Origine Arménienne de Valence (ASOA) at this point is not clear from the literature used; at least he took over the red and white colors of FC, and his first team played their competitive games at the larger Stade Georges-Pompidou . In 1993 ASOA gave itself a professional status, in 1998 even came within eight points of a promotion place in the first division and stayed in Division 2 until 2000 , to which it returned for two years in 2002.
In the national cup, the "Armenians", in whose ranks there were now significantly more Africans than descendants from the club's founding milieu, were able to draw special attention twice during these years. 2001 they defeated the third division , among others, the AS Monaco , the reigning French champions at this time, and only retired in the second round to eventual cup winners Racing Strasbourg from. In 1996 they even made it to the quarter-finals, in which they were also defeated by the later competition winner ( AJ Auxerre ) - with 0: 2, as in 2001 - and in this game with over 14,000 spectators, one that is still unmatched to this day (2013) Set a club record.
When ASOA Valence had again qualified for the second division in 2005, the league association refused her promotion for financial reasons. The club then filed for bankruptcy and was re-established as the Association Sportive de Valence. In 2014, the ASV league eleven were administratively transferred from fourth to fifth league, the club went bankrupt like its predecessor and was re-established as Olympique Valence.
AS and Olympique Valence
The ASOA successor had to start again in the now sixth class Division d'Honneur. In 2011, he was promoted to the fourth division ( Championnat de France Amateur (CFA) ), the top national amateur division. In the cup competition for the Coupe de France , the ASV only once reached the main round ( 2011/12 ), in which they were eliminated in the sixteenth-finals against first division FC Évian Thonon Gaillard .
League affiliation and achievements
First class ( Division 1 , since 2003 Ligue 1 ) has not played either Olympique or one of the previous clubs and therefore has not yet won a championship title. Only the ASOA had professional status, and that from 1993 to 2005. Olympique started playing in the seventh-class Promotion d'Honneur .
Trainer
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Mario Zatelli , coach at CS La Voulte Valence (1954–1959) -
Didier Notheaux , ASOA trainer (1993–1995, 2000–2003)
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Bruno Metsu , ASOA trainer (1998–1999)
player
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Hamlet Mchitarjan , Armenian national player, (1989-1994) with ASOA -
Bill Tchato , Cameroonian national player, (1996-1998) with ASOA -
Olivier Sorlin (1997–1999) at ASOA
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Cédric Kanté , national player for Mali, (2002–2003) with ASOA
literature
- Thierry Berthou / Collectif: Dictionnaire historique des clubs de football français. Pages de Foot, Créteil 1999, Volume 2, ISBN 2-913146-02-3
- L'Équipe / Gérard Ejnès: Coupe de France. La folle épopée. L'Équipe, Issy-les-Moulineaux 2007, ISBN 978-2-915-53562-4