Bourges FC
The Football Club Bourges 18 (until the 21st century FC Bourges , since then Bourges 18 ) is a French football club from Bourges ; the 18 stands for the serial number of the central French department of Cher .
history
In the mid-1960s, three clubs from Bourges played in the Division d'Honneur - the Racing Club (honorary division since 1952), Foyer Saint-François , a club from the Catholic sports movement, and the Athletic Club - without any of them the rise in the national amateur league would have been successful. Then the first two merged in 1966 to concentrate local forces to form FC Bourges, which at the end of its first season (1966/67) made it to the next higher league ( Championnat de France Amateur ). The club colors were navy and light blue. In 1970 Bourges even rose to the second division , which was an open league from that season on , in which both professionals and amateurs were allowed to compete.
The club, whose first team played their home games at the Stade Séraucourt , took over financially in the second half of the 1970s - whereby the debt amount of 600,000 francs (which corresponds to around 360,000 DM or 185,000 euros) seems almost negligible in the 21st century - had to file for bankruptcy in 1978 and found himself in the fourth division after the usual immediate re-establishment in France. From the mid-1980s to the mid-1990s, FCB, which started in 1991 in the newly built, 10,000-seat Stade Jacques-Rimbaud , again shuttled between the second and third division .
Since then, the club has had to struggle with financial problems (bankruptcies in 1995 and 1998), which were accompanied by a sporting demotion to lower leagues. Another bankruptcy followed in 2005, and the successor club was renamed Bourges Football; In 2008 a new merger with a neighboring club, the Bourges-Asnières 18 , under the name FC Bourges 18 and with the club colors blue and red followed. In 2009 he at least managed to return from the sixth class Division d'Honneur to the second-highest, national amateur division CFA 2.
League affiliation and achievements
The footballers from Bourges have never played first class ( Division 1 , since 2002 Ligue 1 ); However, they were represented in the second division for a total of eleven seasons , namely from 1970 to 1975, 1976/77, 1986/87 and from 1990 to 1994 . For Bourges, last season was also the only one in which all participants - including FC Bourges - had to have professional status. Her best placement was a fifth place in 1972 (league with 48 teams in three seasons) and a seventh place in 1993 (league with 36 teams in two seasons).
With a total of ten draws, Bourges has also reached the national main round in the French cup competition ; this was last achieved in the 1996/97 season . However, the players were eliminated eight times in the first round, the thirty-second finals. In 1990/91, however, they defeated first division Girondins Bordeaux 1-0 before the "Heroes from Bourges" were defeated in the following round at Paris Saint-Germain in the Parc des Princes after a very open argument with the same result. The following year , FC Bourges prevailed in the sixteenth-finals on the place of the higher-class Le Havre AC 1-0 after extra time, but then lost to AS Nancy , again away, with 1: 2. This reaching the last sixteen was also the most successful cup course in the central French.
In the 2013/14 season, the first men's team will play in the fifth class CFA 2 , the second highest amateur league.
Well-known former players and coaches
- Morgan Sanson , 2005–2009 player with Bourges
- Farès Bousdira , French international, player for Bourges in 1987/88
- Robert Brown , coach 1994-1998
- René Donoyan , player 1971/72
- Jan Fiala , Czechoslovak international, player from 1988 to 1991
- Hervé Florès , player in the late 1980s
- Patrice Garande , 1993/94 player
- César Hector "Pancho" Gonzalès , coach 1972/73
- Alain Michel (soccer coach) , “club myth”, worked in various functions from 1983 to 1994 - mainly as head coach
- Vasile Miriuță , player 1993/94
- Robert Nouzaret , coach 1982/83
- Robert Siatka , player-coach 1970–1972 and 1973/74
- Alain Vandeputte , player 1986/87
literature
- Thierry Berthou / Collectif: Dictionnaire historique des clubs de football français. Pages de Foot, Créteil 1999, Volume 1, ISBN 2-913146-01-5
- L'Équipe / Gérard Ejnès: Coupe de France. La folle épopée. L'Équipe, Issy-les-Moulineaux 2007, ISBN 978-2-915-53562-4