Division 1 Féminine

The current logo of Division 1 Féminine

The 1 Féminine Division or short D1F is the top division in French women's football . It was established in 1992, was officially named Championnat National 1 A (N1A) until 2002 and consisted of twelve teams from the start. So far, their teams from 57 clubs have belonged, the longest being ASJ Soyaux , Juvisy FCF (the only one in all seasons up to 2017), Paris Saint-Germain , Montpellier HSC and Stade Saint-Brieuc . For the first time from the beginning of the 2019/20 season , the chemical company Arkema is a name sponsor in this league.

In terms of organization and sports law, it is subordinate to the regional association FFF . The winning team is awarded a challenge cup as the French women's champion of the season in question. Before the league was founded, a championship in the form of a final tournament had been played since 1974/75.

In a European comparison, the league was created relatively late. On March 21, 2013, thanks to the success of their representatives in the UEFA Women's Champions League , the D1F took first place in the UEFA five-year ranking for the first time  - ahead of the German and Swedish top division . Despite such developments, which are essentially based on the successes of a single club (the "serial champion" Olympique Lyon ), the D1F in France takes from media and spectator interest, but also from economic indicators (club budgets, player income, transfer fees, sponsorship) only a subordinate position compared to the men's first division .

History of the championships

The FFF has not recognized the title fights and holders from the early decades of the 20th century up to the present day. The subsequent, official and so far four decades long French championships after the Second World War can be divided into a few sections, each of which was dominated by one or two women's teams.

Overall, the history of French women's football in these four decades shows only eleven different championship clubs - and if you take into account that the successful teams in Toulouse and Lyon had changed clubs to the larger local club, only nine. Juvisy FCF can claim the longest lasting success (see also the " Eternal Table " below) , because since 1992 there have only been three seasons in which he was not one of the best three teams in France - that was 2010 / 11 and 2015/16, when the women from the 15,000-inhabitant community were only fourth in the final table, and in 2016/17 with a fifth place. In 2017 Juvisy merged with Paris FC and will therefore not be able to continue its success story.

Prehistory to the middle of the 20th century

Women played football in France even before World War I , and there were national champions back then as well, although these sporting activities were mainly concentrated in Paris . Fémina Sport won twelve of the 15 titles , and the other champions (twice En Avant and Les Sportives ) also came from the capital. Because neither the FFF, founded in 1919, nor its predecessor Comité Français Interfédéral (CFI) were willing to accept women's clubs, they had founded their own association, the Fédération des Sociétés Féminines Sportives de France (FSFSF), which organized the game. This early history came to an end in the first half of the 1930s.

In the more than three decades that followed, profound social, economic and political changes also affected women's football. In the 1930s these were primarily the increasing rejection of this sport in large parts of French society, the growing competition from other leisure activities for young women and the material effects of the global economic crisis (for more details, see here ). From 1940 and under the German occupation of the country, the collaborating Vichy regime promoted a gender role model that was positive about physical and sporting activity by women, but not football, which was officially branded as "harmful to women" and banned in 1941. These developments continued through the liberation of France and the first phase of reconstruction. Even in the 1950s, unlike in other states west of the Iron Curtain , in societies more strongly influenced by Catholicism such as the French, not even tentative steps were taken to reinstall women's football. These only took place with the social and attitude change twenty years after the end of the war.

Legalization of women's football and championship finals

After women's football had been revived in France since the mid-1960s, it took until March 1970 before the national association FFF legalized its practice (for more information, see here ), and another four years before it had an official French championship brought into being. Eight women's teams qualified for their first final round ( 1974/75 ) in regional preliminary rounds : FC Bergerac , SC Caluire Saint-Clair , ARC Cavaillon , FC Metz , Arago Sport Orléans , Stade Reims , FC Rouen and FC Vendenheim . The women from Reims won the title in this debut season .

Stade Reims, which was represented in all eight finals up to 1982 and won five of them, as well as AS Étrœungt (three times victorious in four finals) dominated this first period. Incidentally, these two are the only national champions who have never belonged to the highest league in France up to and including the 2015/16 season. Interestingly, teams from the capital region played no role during this time. This changed with the beginning of the football dominance of the VGA Saint-Maur ; their women brought it to six championship titles between 1983 and 1990, interrupted only by a success each of ASJ Soyaux , which lost four more finals, and CS Saint-Brieuc . Saint-Maur's last participation in the final (1991) went hand in hand with the beginning of the supremacy of FC Lyon and Juvisy FCF , which until 1998 almost alternately secured the championship title - both in recent years, when this was still a mixture of group games and a final round in knockout mode , as well as in the pure league operation introduced in 1992.

The championships before the league was introduced (1974–1992)
season	master	Runner-up	Result final	Semi-finalists (1979/80 to 1981/82 and 1986/87: semi-final group runner-up)
1974/75	Stade Reims	Arago Sport Orléans	5-0	FC Rouen , FC Bergerac
1975/76	Stade Reims	FC Rouen	4: 1/4: 0	FC Bergerac, AS Pusignan
1976/77	Stade Reims	SC Caluire Saint-Clair	4: 0/0: 1	FC Bergerac, AS Étrœungt
1977/78	AS Étrœungt	Stade Reims	1: 0/1: 1	AS Romagnat , SC Caluire Saint-Clair
1978/79	AS Étrœungt	Stade Reims	2: 0/1: 2	Olympique Marseille , FC Lyon
1979/80	Stade Reims	AS Soyaux	2-0	Olympique Marseille, Stade Quimper
1980/81	AS Étrœungt	Stade Reims	1: 1, 5: 4 i. E.	FC Lyon, ASJ Soyaux
1981/82	Stade Reims	AS Étrœungt	2: 1	SC Caluire Saint-Clair, ASJ Soyaux
1982/83	VGA Saint-Maur	FCF Henin-Beaumont	1: 1, 7: 6 i. E.	US Cannes-Bocca , ASJ Soyaux
1983/84	ASJ Soyaux	VGA Saint-Maur	1-0	FCF Henin-Beaumont, AS Muret
1984/85	VGA Saint-Maur	FC Lyon	2-0	EC Tours , FCF Hénin-Beaumont
1985/86	VGA Saint-Maur	ASJ Soyaux	5: 1	Omnium Sports Monaco , ASPTT Strasbourg
1986/87	VGA Saint-Maur	ASJ Soyaux	3-0	FC Le Neubourg , FC Lyon / OS Monaco ( ex aequo )
1987/88	VGA Saint-Maur	FCF Henin-Beaumont	1: 1, 3: 2 i. E.	CS Saint-Brieuc , JS Poissy
1988/89	CS Saint-Brieuc	ASJ Soyaux	2: 2, 5: 4 i. E.	JS Poissy, Racing Flacé-Mâcon
1989/90	VGA Saint-Maur	JS Poissy	3-0	Juvisy FCF , FC Lyon
1990/91	FC Lyon	VGA Saint-Maur	1: 1, 4: 2 i. E.	JS Poissy, Juvisy FCF
1991/92	Juvisy FCF	CS Saint-Brieuc	3: 2	FCF Hénin-Beaumont, FC Lyon

The creation of a French league

The women's league was founded because, since the second half of the 1980s, dissatisfaction with the previous championship mode had grown among all those involved. The top clubs and the high-performing players complained that in the first half of a season they were almost never challenged against often very poor opponents at regional level and that these games were hardly attractive for spectators, so that the income often did not even cover the travel costs for away games . As early as 1982, the coach of AS Étrœungt, Daniel Bertrand , criticized the competition format as "laughable" and the first championship phase as a pure loss of time. There was also increasing criticism from association circles, even though the male-dominated FFF showed an “absolute lack of interest in topics related to women's football”. But both Aimé Mignot, who was appointed national coach in 1987, and the combative pioneer Marilou Duringer saw the only way out in the face of stagnating performance in the women's national team , which had not yet qualified for a continental tournament, in a "concentration at the top". 1991 - France was again absent from the European and World Cup finals  - the FFF Federal Council then decided to introduce the league under amateur conditions from 1992, with twelve participants in a single group (poule unique) to determine the French champions. This happened much later than in Scandinavia in particular, but also in Belgium or Switzerland and shortly after Germany and England.

To determine which teams were allowed to belong to the Championnat National 1 A in its debut season, it was determined that the top four of the three championship preliminary round groups from the 1991/92 season were qualified. The FFF decided not to include the successes of previous years or to take into account the principle of “only one association per city”.
The field of participants consisted of FCF Condé-sur-Noireau , Racing Flacé-Mâcon , FCF Hénin-Beaumont , defending champions Juvisy FCF , FC Lyon , JS Poissy , CS Saint-Brieuc , VGA Saint-Maur , ASJ Soyaux , ASPTT Strasbourg and the Toulouse teams from TOAC and Olympique Mirail together. Two of the three group fifths ( Paris Saint-Germain and the US Villers-les-Pots ), on the other hand, only missed qualifying by one point.

National 1 A and Division 1 Féminine

All league seasons

season	master	Runner-up	Third
1992/93	FC Lyon	Juvisy FCF	VGA Saint-Maur
1993/94	Juvisy FCF	FC Lyon	ASPTT Strasbourg
1994/95	FC Lyon	Toulouse OAC	Juvisy FCF
1995/96	Juvisy FCF	ASJ Soyaux	Toulouse OAC
1996/97	Juvisy FCF	Toulouse OAC	CS Saint-Brieuc
1997/98	FC Lyon	Juvisy FCF	Toulouse OAC
1998/99	Toulouse OAC	ESOF La Roche	Juvisy FCF
1999/00	Toulouse OAC	Juvisy FCF	ESOF La Roche
2000/01	Toulouse OAC	ESOF La Roche	Juvisy FCF
2001/02	Toulouse FC	Juvisy FCF	FC Lyon
2002/03	Juvisy FCF	FC Lyon	Montpellier HSC
2003/04	Montpellier HSC	FC Lyon	Juvisy FCF
2004/05	Montpellier HSC	Juvisy FCF	Olympique Lyon
2005/06	Juvisy FCF	Montpellier HSC	Olympique Lyon
2006/07	Olympique Lyon	Montpellier HSC	Juvisy FCF
2007/08	Olympique Lyon	Juvisy FCF	Montpellier HSC
2008/09	Olympique Lyon	Montpellier HSC	Juvisy FCF
2009/10	Olympique Lyon	Juvisy FCF	Paris Saint-Germain
2010/11	Olympique Lyon	Paris Saint-Germain	Montpellier HSC
2011/12	Olympique Lyon	Juvisy FCF	Montpellier HSC
2012/13	Olympique Lyon	Paris Saint-Germain	Juvisy FCF
2013/14	Olympique Lyon	Paris Saint-Germain	Juvisy FCF
2014/15	Olympique Lyon	Paris Saint-Germain	Juvisy FCF
2015/16	Olympique Lyon	Paris Saint-Germain	Montpellier HSC
2016/17	Olympique Lyon	Montpellier HSC	Paris Saint-Germain
2017/18	Olympique Lyon	Paris Saint-Germain	Montpellier HSC
2018/19	Olympique Lyon	Paris Saint-Germain	Montpellier HSC
2019/20	Olympique Lyon	Paris Saint-Germain	Girondins Bordeaux
2020/21

After the six-year double dominance of the players from FC Lyon and Juvisy FCF, the French soccer champions came from Toulouse ( TOAC and TFC ) for four years in a row from 1998 , then twice each from HSC Montpellier and again from the women's club from Juvisy-sur-Orge . In 2006/07 the uninterrupted streak of 14 titles won so far by the women of Olympique Lyon began . How unreserved their supremacy is can be seen in the balance sheet of these years: of their 302 league games up to the end of the 2019/20 season, they won 277 and only five (two each against Juvisy and Paris Saint-Germain, one against Hénin-Beaumont ) lost. For Paris (eight times), Montpellier and Juvisy (three times each) only runner-up championships remained. There has been a change here since 2012 in that Paris Saint-Germain has increasingly narrowed the gap to Lyon, while "the gap between these two and the rest of the league is growing".

Even in the first few years, the association placed great emphasis on continuous youth development by the first division. In order to enforce this, he threatened the clubs with point deductions if they did not operate girls' teams of different ages (three points for each missing team) or if they did not employ trained trainers (two points). The first clubs to be sanctioned for failing to meet this obligation at the end of the season were FCF Hénin-Beaumont and OS Monaco in 1993/94 . Two seasons later, JS Poissy was hit particularly hard, with eight of their twelve points on the pitch deducted. These conditions were often not easy to meet, especially for clubs from rural areas or small women's football departments. Celtic Marseille was the last club to receive such a deduction in 2001, before Hénin-Beaumont again in 2011, AS Muret in 2014 and Arras FCF in 2015. In no case were these penalties decisive for relegation or relegation of an affected club.
The aim of promoting young women was also served by the association's decision in 2002 to include CNFE Clairefontaine, an unscheduled team in the D1F made up of young people from the “ National Education and Training Center ”. The FFF ended this experiment, which was quite successful in sport, in 2007. However, this interlude also suffered: FCF Monteux, as one of three second division group winners qualified for promotion, had to stand back for Clairefontaine in 2002 and then failed three more times (2003, 2005 and 2008) in the promotion games.

Finally, since the 2010/11 season, there has also been an A youth league (Challenge National Féminin U19) , which in the first few years consisted of 16 teams in two groups and since 2014/15 27 teams in three seasons , to strengthen youth work includes. Since 2014, all men's professional clubs have had to maintain women's and girls' teams, but this has not all been implemented on time. The “Féminisation de Football” program, run by association president Noël Le Graët together with his general secretary Brigitte Henriques , with which the FFF has been massively promoting women's football since 2011 , is particularly aimed at training young people and providing structural support for small clubs; indirectly, however, the level of play in the D1F will also benefit from this.

The great majority of coaches in Division 1 are still male even in the 2010s, as are the two four-time Lyon title winners Farid Benstiti and Patrice Lair . This statement also applies to pure women's football clubs. There were and are quite successful coaches like Dominique Tedeschi and Élisabeth Loisel (even before the league was founded with VGA Saint-Maur, Loisel later also as national coach), Bernadette Constantin (Soyaux), Sarah M'Barek (Montpellier, Guingamp), Sandrine Mathivet (Juvisy) and Corinne Diacre (Soyaux, from 2014 coach of Clermont's men's professional team for three years and then also Sélectionneuse of the national team).
In return, games in this league in the 2010s were exclusively run by teams of referees , in which men only act on the sidelines . The French referee, Nelly Viennot , who is also globally best known , directed games in the N1A in the 1990s and, like her currently most successful colleague, Stéphanie Frappart , also directed professional men's games.

The current season

→ Main article : Division 1 Féminine 2019/20

In the past 2018/19 season, the league consisted of the following participants: Girondins Bordeaux , FCO Dijon (promoted), FC Fleury , EA Guingamp , OSC Lille , Olympique Lyon (defending champion), FC Metz (promoted), Montpellier HSC , Paris FC , Paris Saint-Germain FC , AF Rodez and ASJ Soyaux .

At the end of that season, Olympique Lyon had won the title for the thirteenth time in a row; Runner-up was again PSG, which also qualified for the Women's Champions League . Far behind were Montpellier, Bordeaux and Paris FC in the upper midfield. The seven remaining teams played against relegation, which had already emerged for Rodez at an early stage, while Lille could still hope until the last match day, but also had to leave the top division in the end.

For the 2019/20 season, Olympique Marseille returned from Division 2 to the D1F, accompanied by the debutant and 56th club in league history, Stade Reims , which, however, had the strongest team in France (five-time national champions) in the early days of women's football. This means that the upper house of football includes ten women's teams that belong to a men's professional club, and only one all-women (Soyaux) and one amateur club (Fleury). The first match day is August 24, 2019; The 22nd matchday, which ends the season, is scheduled for May 30th, 2020.

Host mode and regulations

In the course of a season, each team meets each other twice, once in front of their own audience, the other time away. The usual main game day is Sunday, but individual matches are also played on Saturdays. The champions and runners-up qualify for the UEFA Women's Champions League , while the last-placed teams are relegated to Division 2 Féminine . At the end of the 2010/11 season there were three relegated teams from the D1F for the first time, because since the beginning of this season the second division has consisted of three instead of two groups, whose group winners have the right to direct promotion. This regulation was reversed at the end of the 2015/16 season, because from 2016/17 there are again only two D2 seasons (see below ) .

Up to and including 1994/95 the two- , then the three-point rule applied. Since the 1998/99 season, unlike in most other European women's leagues, four points have been awarded for a win and a draw with two instead of one point. There was even a point for a defeat if the game was played and not decided at the green table . From the 2016/17 season, the D1F (like the second division) returned to the three-point rule. Another French peculiarity is that in the event of a tie between two or more teams, the results from the direct clashes are used as the first placement criterion and only then the goal difference or the number of hits scored in all 22 games.

From 1999/2000, following the “normal” double round of points, a championship round of the best four teams was held to determine the title winner; From this season finale, known in France as the Poule des as ("Group of Asse"), the association had expected increased audience interest. In four of the five events, a different team was at the top than the table leader in the first phase of the season. After the 2003/04 season, the FFF ended this experiment, also under pressure from the clubs.

The regular period for changing clubs is from June 1st to July 15th of each year. In contrast to men, women footballers can still switch between July 16 and January 31 of the following year; however, this requires the consent of the selling club. If a player had already played for a D1F club in the first half of the season, she was not allowed to switch to a league competitor until the second half of 2017, but only for the following season. Since this restriction does not exist in the men's leagues, the affected Karima Benameur intended in 2015 to challenge it in an ordinary court due to its incompatibility with the prohibition of discrimination . Starting with the “transfer window” in January 2018, the FFF changed this provision; From then on, clubs may lend up to four players to other D1F clubs during the winter break and temporarily accept up to three of them, provided they are of legal age and have a federal contract (see the section below ) . In particular, financially strong clubs with a large squad can enable their talents and additional players to have more match practice.

There is also a foreigner clause in the women's league , according to which the club officials are not allowed to use more than two players who are citizens of a non- EU country.

Amateurs, contract players and professionals

In 2017 there were a total of 118,842 registered female soccer players of all ages in France; Women's football in Europe was only able to count on a larger number in Germany (just under 204,000) and the Netherlands (155,000) - the latter also have the most teams in the adult segment.

Until 2002, all of the French female footballers were pure amateurs. Until then, only very few clubs reimbursed their players for travel expenses to away games or equipment; No victory or point bonuses were paid. It was only during the previous decade of the first division (since 1992) that training twice a week became customary, which even at the beginning of the 21st century had not increased to four units at all clubs. The national player Élodie Woock , who later also played abroad, put it in 1998:

"We still embody the true values ​​[of sport], we are not motivated by money or fame, but passion, enthusiasm and emotions."

The majority of the first division clubs still had amateur status in 2015, although from the 2002/03 season they were allowed to financially reward women players for practicing their sport, with the maximum allowable remuneration being extremely moderate compared to men's football. For this purpose, the FFF introduced an employment contract known as a “federal contract” (contrat fédéral) , which has been in place for the opposite sex for a long time, which regulates income levels as well as other rights and obligations of clubs and soccer players, for example when changing clubs. The minimum wages are set anew every year in coordination with the players' union UNFP . These federal contracts can only be concluded with first and second division clubs and do not have to include full-time employment. But even in the D1F in 2013 only around 60 of a total of almost 300 players had such a contract; two thirds of these played for Lyon or Paris (season budget between three and a half and five million euros each, while league third Juvisy had doubled its budget, but it only increased to 0.9 million euros). Two years earlier, for example, there were 20 contracts with Lyon, two each with Paris and Guingamp and only one such contract with Juvisy. While one can currently assume an average income of around 4,000 euros for the three financially strongest clubs, the agreed amount for contract players with other first division clubs is only a good half of this amount. In addition, there are point bonuses (a maximum of 150 euros per victory) and 200 euros allowance from the FFF, from which only top players benefit. On the other hand, even an exceptionally successful club like Juvisy FCF regards it as progress that, since 2013, it has been able to reimburse all of its players for loss of earnings in their main occupation, which results from intensified training participation during working hours.
Soccer players who are in such a regulated employment relationship are referred to as contract amateurs or - in France, the term is not used very well - semi-professionals (semi-professional) . As a rule, if they are not still in training, they have to pursue a professional activity in addition to their sport; Some find support through their association and occasionally through the association and its subdivisions, which provide jobs in offices or the promotion of young talent.

Although none of the women's clubs or departments has a professional statute comparable to men's sport, there were also real professional women athletes in the 2010s whose income is freely negotiable; these are mostly foreign or domestic national players. In French women's football, however, only Olympique Lyon, Paris SG and HSC Montpellier currently have a larger number of professionals, because their women's teams are backed by the financial resources of clubs with successful men's teams. In the beginning these were mainly foreigners (see the corresponding chapter below).
Information on the exact income is usually not known; In 2012, L'Équipe put the salary range in the Olympique Lyon squad at between 1,500 and 10,000 euros per month; each player received a Smart from the club . However, an example like that of FCF Hénin-Beaumont is more typical of the majority of clubs. In the same year, the northern French had only two contract amateurs in their line-up, one of which was rewarded with 900 euros gross and a rent-free apartment, while the rest of the players had to be content as amateurs with 60 euros prize money.

What is new in women's football is the “buying out” of players from their current contract by a league competitor, which first took place in 2013: Paris is to pay a transfer fee of 50,000 euros for the national center forward Marie-Laure Delie , who was tied to Montpellier for twelve months to have. In 2015, Lyon even paid Guingamp more than double that amount to secure the services of Griedge Mbock Bathy .

The average age of the league players is very low. Of the 316 female athletes used in 2014/15, 20 were no more than 16 years old at the start of the season, one of them, Angéline Da Costa from Albi, was only 14. In contrast, only 15 women belonged to the age group of at least 30-year-olds. The most strongly represented individual age group was the group of 17-year-olds (34 players), followed by the one year older (33) and the 22-year-olds (31).

Foreign women in the league

In very few cases, foreign women had already played for a French first division team during the N1A; In 1993, for example, the Russian attacker Irina Olegovna Grigoryeva was part of the FC Lyon squad. However, it was only with the legalization of remuneration in women's football by the FFF and the growing strength of the D1F that France became attractive for footballers from other countries; only then are consistent comparative figures available. It started with four foreigners in the 2003/04 season - including three Hungarians at the USCCO Compiègne  - whose number had grown to a dozen in 2010/11 and tripled again to 38 players at the beginning of 2015, two thirds of which with one of the “four big players “Of Division 1 have signed. In 2017, according to a study by UEFA, France was the most attractive destination for foreign (semi) professional players in Europe - ahead of England, Sweden and Norway. Most of the 1,800 female players who earn their living exclusively from sport are also active in these four associations.

In the less financially strong clubs, mainly players from second or third class women's football nations were used; Soyaux strengthened itself in 2003 with the Canadian Wanda Rozwadowska , Racing Saint-Étienne in 2007/08 with three Malians, Juvisy in 2011 with the Belgian Janice Cayman , Soyaux in 2012 with Fiona O'Sullivan and ASPTT Albi in 2014 with Stephanie Roche , these two from Ireland. If such clubs occasionally brought in players from stronger foreign leagues, it was usually those who were not in the front row in their home country.

National players from one of the dominant foreign leagues were the first to sign Olympique Lyon at the beginning of 2005 with seven women from the USA, including Hope Solo , Danielle Slaton , Lorrie Fair , Aly Wagner and Christie Welsh . Most of them left Lyon at the end of the season; However, the club continued to rely on foreigners, of whom at least three were always in its squad until 2014/15. After the US women, these were mainly Latin Americans ( Shirley Cruz Traña , Simone , Kátia , Rosana ) and Scandinavians ( Bente Nordby , Isabell Herlovsen , Dorte Dalum Jensen , Lotta Schelin , Ingvild Stensland ), but Lara Dickenmann was also a Swiss woman .

In the 2010s, the range of nationalities in the D1F expanded further. New additions were in particular Japanese women - to HSC Montpellier ( Rumi Utsugi , Aya Sameshima ), to Lyon ( Ami Otaki , Saki Kumagai ) and Guingamp (Otaki from 2015) - and Germans (initially with the exception of Pauline Bremer's move to Lyon almost exclusively in Paris where, among others, Annike Krahn , Linda Bresonik , Fatmire Alushi and Anja Mittag have signed a contract) and from the British Isles. But it also remained that American women (like Megan Rapinoe in Lyon, Tobin Heath , Lindsey Horan and Cristiane in Paris) and Scandinavians ( Sofia Jakobsson , Josefine Öqvist in Montpellier, Ada Hegerberg in Lyon, Kosovare Asllani and Caroline Seger in Paris) in Compete in France. Countries like Nigeria ( Desire Oparanozie in Guingamp), Cameroon (Saint-Maurs Marlyse Ngo Ndoumbouk ), China ( Wang Fei near Lyon), Poland (PSG's goalkeeper Katarzyna Kiedrzynek ) or the Ukraine ( Iryna Swarytsch near Juvisy and Montpellier) contribute to the internationality the D1F.

Conversely, since 2002 comparatively few French women have gained experience in one of the other strong women's leagues, such as Élodie Woock , Sandrine Brétigny , Marina Makanza , Élise Bussaglia and most recently in 2018 Laura Georges in the German Bundesliga, Marinette Pichon , Stéphanie Mugneret-Béghé , Camille Abily , Laura Georges, Amandine Henry and a few others in the USA and Sabrina Viguier in Sweden. The first contracts with top clubs from England and, even more, Spain have recently been added.

Audience numbers and media perception

In the stadiums

Everyday life: almost empty ranks (Hénin-Beaumont versus Yzeure, 2011)

From the 2003/04 season up to and including 2008/09, the average number of visitors was between 140 and 180 payers per league match. Complete information for previous years is not yet available. In the following two seasons this value rose to a little over 200, so that with 132 point games, a total of 26,000 to 30,000 spectators found their way to the stadiums of Division 1. In the years after the 2011 World Cup , which was successful for France , spectator interest increased sharply and tripled, and in the 2013/14 season even only slightly missed the 700 mark (89,900 visitors in total); in the subsequent season the value fell slightly (630 spectators per match). In 2018/19, in the immediate run-up to the Women's World Cup in France , it then reached the 900 mark for the first time. The guest performances of series champion Lyon in particular are crowd pullers, and since the beginning of the 2010s those of Paris too.
In front of a home crowd, Lyon had the highest value in the 2013/14 season with an average of 3,100 visitors, followed by Juvisy (812), Soyaux (759), Guingamp (602), Yzeure and Paris; Relegated Muret, however, only came to less than 200 spectators. That is why Paris, Lyon, Montpellier, Guingamp, Saint-Étienne and Metz do not play their home league games in the stadium where the first men's team of the respective club competes. Montpellier's women usually compete either on the eastern outskirts (Domaine de Grammont) or in Sussargues , Saint-Étienne in L'Étrat and the Metzerinnen in Algrange, 35 km away . The Parisians use the capital's second largest sports facility, the Stade Charléty . Lyon usually plays on a side course of the Stade Gerland and Guingamp continues to play on the Stade Fred-Aubert of Saint-Brieuc ; these two women only move to the main stadium of the club when they expect a large number of visitors for a single match.

The exception: Paris welcomes Lyon (2013)

The best-attended games since 2003 were the games between the women of hosts Lyon and Paris Saint-Germain who had the same points in both years: 30,661 visitors attended the match on the 10th matchday of the 2019/20 season, and on the 20th matchday of the 2018 / 19 there were 25,907 paying viewers. Until then, Guingamp had held the record against Lyon with 12,263 (2011/12), followed by Lyon against Paris (10,122, 2014/15), again Guingamp against Lyon (7,850, 2012/13), Lyon against Paris (7,512, 2013 / 14), Lyon v Montpellier (7,411, 2013/14), Lyon v Paris (7,037, 2015/16) and Juvisy v Lyon (7,000, 2011/12).
Admission prices for point games are also moderate in the 2014/15 season and are on average less than six euros for adults; the cheapest is a visit to Issy (three euros), the most expensive in Paris (nine euros). On the 4th match day 2015/16, the host clubs demanded between five (Montpellier, Rodez) and eight euros (Juvisy); even for the top encounter between Lyon and Paris you only had to pay seven euros.

Compared with the first German league (mean number of visitors per game since 2010 between 800 and 1,200, best-attended game: 12,464), the audience in France is overall weaker, but at the top it is almost the same and even tending to increase. For the leagues in Sweden and England that are most comparable in terms of performance, no meaningful compilations are available so far.

In the media

The weekly trade magazine France Football has been printing the results and the D1F table in its results section since 2010, unlike, for example, for the fourth men's division but without lineups, goal scorers, attendance numbers and other details, let alone match reports. This does not look any better with the daily sports newspaper L'Équipe.

Since its introduction in 1992/93, there have been occasional short reports on the women's league on television, and from February 2000 the very popular Téléfoot program on TF1 gave a weekly time slot in which Corinne Diacre was able to report four minutes on topics from women's football . But the first contract to broadcast league games on television was only signed after the success of the national team at the 2011 World Cup, and only for one season. Rights holders Eurosport and Télévision Française paid a total of 110,000 euros for eleven games. In the following year, the association and both broadcasters signed a two-year contract that provided for 50% higher payments. Each of the twelve first division clubs received 4,000 euros as a fixed salary. In the 2013/14 season, the number of live broadcasts on Eurosport 2 and France 4 rose to 17 of the 132 games, and revenues increased accordingly. After all, Eurosport introduced a studio program called Femmes de foot , broadcast every Monday from 10:45 p.m. in September 2014 , which deals exclusively with women's football and focuses on Division 1; this is a first across Europe. For the period 2018 to 2023, the Canal + group has acquired the broadcasting rights that intend to broadcast all league games on pay TV . For this, however, it is necessary for some clubs to create the technical requirements or to move to a better equipped stadium. The income of the French Football Association tripled as a result of this award from 1.8 to 5.4 million euros annually.

At footofeminin.fr and footdelles.com (see below under web links ) there is a live ticker on every match day .

Clubs and their finances

Since 2002 in particular, it has been noted that women's teams meet in the league who have very different requirements - and, as a result, different sporting success prospects. The participants can be divided into three categories, namely teams from all-women clubs, those from mixed-sex amateur clubs and finally those from clubs whose first male eleven plays in the professional field. In the first season of the French women's league (1992/93), not a single men's professional club was represented, and for around 20 years their share never exceeded a third. This relationship changed fundamentally in the 2010s, as the table below shows.

season	pure women's associations	mixed amateur clubs	(Men's) professional clubs
1992/93	6th	6th	0
1997/98	5	7th	0
2002/03	6th	3	3
2008/09	6th	2	4th
2011/12	4th	3	5
2015/16	3	4th	5
2016/17	2	2	8th
2018/19	1	2	9
2019/20	1	1	10
2020/21	2	1	9

The financial situation of the first two categories is very similar. In view of the overwhelmingly low number of viewers and the low number of television broadcasts mentioned in this chapter, it is difficult, even for more successful clubs, to find powerful private sponsors who pay for jersey advertising or through other services (provision of technical infrastructure or equipment) to the budget of the women's department contribute. In times of budget consolidation, the public authorities, such as municipalities and regional authorities, also find it difficult to provide material support or monetary benefits such as the rent-free provision of city stadiums . The ASJ Soyaux, for example (annual budget 2013/14: 300,000 euros) has quite favorable conditions - comparable potential competitors for advertising money are around 100 km from the location of the traditional club, apart from the neighboring rugby second division SA XV Charente - 2014/15 only two companies (S2EI from neighboring Angoulême and Puma ) and three public bodies (the municipality, the département and the regional council) as sponsors. Albi's trainer David Welferinger considers a “real cultural revolution” to be necessary in order, for example, to give women in amateur clubs “the opportunity to train more often and better”. In view of the discrepancy between low income and high expenditure, teams or departments of such clubs have always come to join a neighboring professional club, such as the women of AS Algrange in 2014 with FC Metz.

Juvisy even had its own fan shop

Within this group, the Juvisy FCF held an absolutely exceptional position - and not only in sporting terms: in 2012, the women's club was able to win two major sponsors (the retail company Carrefour and the sportswear manufacturer Duarig , now replaced by Nike ), around which a pool with more than 15 , mostly grouped to supporters based in the region; Since 2013, the JFCF has also received funds from an anti-discrimination foundation, from which the players are reimbursed for loss of earnings due to sporting activities. In addition, there was an agreement with the General Council of the Essonne Department , according to which the female soccer players can use all the medical services of the nearby National Rugby Education and Training Center “around the clock and like a professional club”. After all, women have recently started playing their home games in a much larger and better equipped stadium in a neighboring municipality. With a seasonal budget of around 900,000 euros (2013/14) Juvisy was the croesus in this category of D1F clubs. However, this is not the budget for the league eleven, but for the club as a whole with its double-digit number of girls and women teams, and a comparison with a “village club” in the men's third division shows how asymmetrically the resources are distributed in top French football FC Chambly has the lowest season budget in its league with one million euros. In 2017 Juvisy then had to realize that even these efforts were not enough because the gap between the economically strong clubs had widened - the JFCF joined the professional Paris FC .

In the third category, the financial situation is much better; For the 2014/15 season, budget planning for four of the six clubs that were represented by men and women in the top division provided for expenditures between 30 and 55 million euros, the other two had even estimated a three-digit million amount. With regard to the expenses for their women's departments, there is also a strong differentiation here. In the case of Lyon, a budget of around 3.5 million euros is said to have been available for this in 2013/14, with Paris even 5 million euros, whereby Lyon was in the process of restricting its budget, while the trend for the capital club since the takeover by the Qatar investor group Sport Investment (2011) is running in the opposite direction. In both cases, these payments do not even make up 3% of the total budget, even though Lyon 2018 is considered to be the club that pays the highest player salaries in Europe. No corresponding figures are known for Montpellier; However, despite its significantly lower sales, the club has regularly committed good female footballers, including foreign ones, for many years.
The other women's departments in this group are also financially supported directly by the association as a whole and they also benefit from the fact that it is easier for them to acquire sponsors due to the illustrious name of the association. But as a rule, the interests of the “figurehead men's team” are given priority in these clubs - this has not changed since the early years of women's football - so that, for example, the women from Saint-Étienne have to play their home games in changing small stadiums outside the city , and Guingamp's first division teams also rarely compete in front of their home crowd. And for training or health care, these teams can rarely fall back on the best-equipped facilities and specialist staff of the association.

The FFF association supports the clubs through regular seminars with external experts, for example on topics relating to the structure and management of the club or efficient fundraising . In addition, he pays the participants from D1 and D2 for away games travel allowances, which were increased for the 2015/16 season. After the successful Men's World Cup in 2018 , the professional league association LFP passed on its share of the payments made by FIFA to the FFF to the twelve women's first division clubs, with a view to the Women's World Cup 2019 in France as a "gesture of solidarity" between the sexes designated. The extent to which the clubs will benefit from the contract with which the FFF transferred the league naming rights to the chemical company Arkema from 2019 to 2022 was initially not disclosed. According to cahiersdufootball.net, each first division team receives 80,000 euros per season.

The D1F in the ligament system

Below the first and second divisions, the league system in France is not yet uniform; In addition to the relatively large autonomy of the regional associations (ligues) , this is due to the still relatively small number of female club footballers of all ages (end of 2014: around 77,000, of which 4,000 in overseas territories ) and their highly uneven distribution within the country. In the French heartland , women's football is most strongly anchored in Rhône-Alpes (7,850), Paris-Île-de-France (7,200), Nord-Pas-de-Calais (5,150) and Brittany (4,100). In other regions, however, the substructure is rather thin; in Corsica only 230, in Maine 1,130, in Champagne-Ardenne 1,540 and in Haute-Normandie 1,580 girls and women have a player pass. That is why the women's team from Stade Reims, which was re-established in 2014, was able to join the Division d'Honneur of the Ligue de Champagne-Ardenne immediately .
From 2002 to 2010 there was a Division 3 (also in several regional groups), in which second teams of first division leaders were also eligible; before and after the Division d'Honneur was / is the third division.

From the 2016/17 season, the second and third leagues were rearranged. The D2 now only consists of two groups of twelve teams each; between D1 and D2 there are only two promoted and relegated teams. A major reason for this was the realization that since the league was launched, a little more than half of all promoted players have immediately relegated to the second division; since the beginning of the careful professionalization and renaming of the national leagues (2002/03) this rate has even deteriorated to 75%.
Between the second and third league, a total of six clubs will continue to be promoted / relegated. In the future Phase d'Accession Nationale (PAN) named promotion round (previously: Championnat Interrégional or CIR ) 22 third division teams as well as the third last of the two D2 relays take part; these 24 teams determine in two knockout rounds with home and return games who will compete in second class in the following season. In the Division d'Honneur, too, from 2016 there will be an obligation to maintain girls' teams (U-12 to U-19) and a “football school” (école de foot) and to employ a suitably qualified coach for the women's league. On the other hand, the supra-regional reorganization of the third league level with a reduction from currently 170 to 40 to 50 participants, which was considered desirable from a performance point of view, was debated, but not decided.

Game operations and classes in overseas territories are subject to the autonomy of the respective regional association. There is no link, for example promotion and relegation, with the leagues in mainland France. And so far, unlike in men's football, women's teams from overseas have not had the right to participate in the national cup competition either. Women's football is broadest there on Réunion (1,270 club players), New Caledonia (1,190) and Guadeloupe (480).

The current pyramidal structure of the system in the French heartland is as follows (as of January 2019):

level	league
1	Division 1 (D1) (12 clubs)
2	Division 2 (D2) (24 clubs in two groups; ascent of the group leaders)
3	Régional 1 (R1) , until 2018 Division d'Honneur (DH) One group per region (a) with i. d. Usually ten to twelve participants. After completing the league rounds in April, the top 22 female teams from those DH relays that meet the association requirements (b) as well as the two D2 group tenth in a two-stage qualification ( Phase d'Accession Nationale or PAN for short) play six teams who belong to D2 in the following season.
4th	Régional 2 (R2) , different designations until 2018 (e.g. Promotion d'Honneur / PH , Division d'Honneur Régionale / DHR )
5 to 11	Régional 3, including Départemental 1 to 3, even lower District 1 to 3
(a)Two neighboring regional associations can also form a joint Division d'Honneur. In 2016/17 there were 19 third division relays, four of which were cross-regional. (b)A key requirement for a DH master or runner-up to be eligible to participate in the PAN is the minimum number of ten teams that must have completed the DH season. In 2016/17, the leagues in Upper Normandy and Champagne-Ardenne did not meet this criterion. In Corsica, due to the very small number of club soccer players, only teams of 8 compete against each other, so that PAN participants are also not allowed from the island.

The French clubs in the European Cup

The European championship competition, introduced by UEFA in 2001/02, was staged 18 times up to and including the 2018/19 season . Until 2009, only the national champions were allowed to take part, since then - with its expansion analogous to the Champions League for men - from the D1F and from seven other leagues also the runner-up.

In the first few years Toulouse (2001/02) and Montpellier (2005/06) each made it to the semi-finals. The strong period of the French clubs only began with the 2007/08 season. From then on, series champion Lyon reached at least the round of the best four women eleven times, stood in eight finals and won the European title in six events (2011, 2012 and 2016 to 2019). In the 2012/13 season there was even a direct encounter between two teams from France in the semi-finals, in which Lyon prevailed against Juvisy.

In the 2013/14 Champions League season, when Lyon had already been eliminated in the last sixteen and Paris even in the sixteenth-finals, a downward trend appeared to be emerging. In the 2014/15 season, Lyon were eliminated in the round of 16, but against Paris, so that a French team was still represented in the competition, which then even reached the final (and just lost). In 2015/16, Lyon won Europe's women's football crown for the third time, and in 2016/17, Lyon - who won the trophy again in the end - and Paris, who had defeated the two German participants in the quarter-finals, faced two French representatives in the final. Lyon secured their sixth success - also the fourth in a row - in 2019.

statistics

Status: after the end of the 2019/20 season

Most successful clubs

Total since 1974/75 14 Title: Olympique Lyon 6 Title: VGA Saint-Maur, Juvisy FCF 5 Title: Stade Reims 4 titles: FC Lyon 3 Title: AS Étrœungt, Toulouse OAC 2 title: Montpellier HSC 1 title: CS Saint-Brieuc, ASJ Soyaux, Toulouse FC

Since the introduction of N1A and D1F 14 Title: Olympique Lyon 5 Title: Juvisy FCF 3 titles: FC Lyon, Toulouse OAC 2 title: Montpellier HSC 1 title: Toulouse FC

In France, the titles of clubs between which the women's football division has been transferred are occasionally added together, so that the younger one (Olympique Lyon, Toulouse FC) comes up with a higher number than in this list.

Double

Since the national cup is played in addition to the championship title - this was the case for the first time in the 2001/02 season - women’s teams can also achieve the double success in both competitions in the same season, known in France as doublé . So far, however, only Toulouse FC (2002) and Olympique Lyon (2008, 2012 to 2017 and 2019) have achieved this.

Best climbers

In the 27 seasons up to and including 2019/20 - in the starting season 1992/93 all first division clubs were newcomers - five newcomers were particularly successful: Toulouse OAC secured the runner-up in 1994/95, Racing Saint-Étienne (2007/08) and Olympique Marseille (2016/17) finished fourth, CNFE Clairfontaine (2002/03) and FCF Nord Allier Yzeure (2008/09) both finished fifth in the final table.
In contrast, a total of 34 out of 73 newcomers (corresponding to 47%) then promptly descended again.

"Eternal table"

The following table only takes into account the seasons since the introduction of a single-track top division (from the 1992/93 season, always with twelve participants). For the entire period, the scores of the participating clubs were calculated according to the three-point rule , even if the two -point rule actually applied until 1994/95 and the four-point rule from 1998/99 to 2016. Point deductions made by the association were taken into account.

Clubs that play in Division 1 in the 2020/21 season are highlighted in pink. Those who no longer participate in women's league operations are marked in yellow because their women's departments had switched to a local rival that had not played women's football before; this was the case in Toulouse (OAC → FC), Montpellier (Le Crès → HSC), ^(c) Lyon (FC → Olympique), Saint-Étienne (Racing → AS) and most recently - two special cases, because they cover several cities - between Saint- Brieuc and Guingamp or Juvisy-sur-Orge and Paris. When clubs change their names, the last name is given.
Status: after the 2019/20 season. The columns “Playing times” and “Last” (together with points, titles and placements) are always updated only after the completion of a fully completed season.

rank	society	Playing times	Title (c)	Vice mstr. (c)	Points	For the first time	to- last
01	Juvisy FCF	25th	5 (d)	8th	1,277	1992/93	2016/17
02	Olympique Lyon	16	14th	-	938	2004/05	2019/20
03	HSC Montpellier	19th	2	4th	911	2001/02	2019/20
04th	Paris Saint-Germain FC	20th	-	8th	802	1994/95	2019/20
05	ASJ Soyaux	26th	- (d)	1	746	1992/93	2019/20
06th	FC Lyon (e)	12	3 (d)	3	531	1992/93	2003/04
07th	Stade Saint-Brieuc	18th	- (d)	-	530	1992/93	2010/11
08th	Toulouse OAC	8th	3	2	384	1992/93	2000/01
09	FCF Henin-Beaumont	14th	-	-	382	1992/93	2013/14
10	ESOF La Roche	14th	-	2	359	1996/97	2015/16
11	Toulouse FC	11	1	-	355	2001/02	2012/13
12	EA Guingamp	9	-	-	245	2011/12	2019/20
13	AS Saint-Etienne	8th	-	-	205	2009/10	2016/17
14th	AF Rodez	9	-	-	204	2010/11	2018/19
15th	Olympique Saint-Memmie	9	-	-	184	1995/96	2005/06
16	CNFE Clairefontaine	5	-	-	176	2002/03	2006/07
17th	VGA Saint-Maur	7th	- (d)	-	171	1992/93	2015/16
18th	FF Yzeure Allier Auvergne	6th	-	-	148	2008/09	2013/14
19th	ASPTT Strasbourg	4th	-	-	113	1992/93	1995/96
20th	Girondins Bordeaux	4th	-	-	109	2016/17	2019/20
21st	FC Vendenheim	6th	-	-	105	2004/05	2012/13
22nd	Entente Montpellier Le Crès (e)	4th	-	-	101	1997/98	2000/01
23	FCF Condé-sur-Noireau	6th	-	-	96	1992/93	2008/09
24	SC Caluire Saint-Clair	5	-	-	89	1995/96	2001/02
25th	Paris FC	3	-	-	86	2017/18	2019/20
26th	ASPTT Albi	4th	-	-	84	2014/15	2017/18
27	JS Poissy	4th	-	-	81	1992/93	1995/96
28	Quimper Stadium	5	-	-	77	1993/94	2002/03
29	USO Bruay-Labuissière	4th	-	-	64	1996/97	2002/03
	Fleury FC	3	-	-	64	2017/18	2019/20
31	Racing Saint-Etienne	2	-	-	61	2007/08	2008/09
32	Olympique Marseille	3	-	-	53	2016/17	2019/20
33	FC Metz	4th	-	-	52	2014/15	2019/20
34	USCCO Compiègne	3	-	-	47	2003/04	2006/07
35	SC Schiltigheim	2	-	-	46	2000/01	2001/02
36	Arras FCF	3	-	-	42	2012/13	2014/15
	US Orléans	3	-	-	42	1994/95	1999/00
38	Lille OSC	2	-	-	41	2017/18	2018/19
39	Le Mans FC	3	-	-	40	1995/96	2010/11
40	FCO Dijon	2	-	-	38	2018/19	2019/20
41	AS Saint-Quentin	2	-	-	36	1997/98	1998/99
42	Celtic Beaumont Marseille	3	-	-	29	1996/97	2000/01
43	ES Cormelles-le-Royal	1	-	-	20th	2000/01	2000/01
44	Croix Blanche OSL Angers	1	-	-	17th	1998/99	1998/99
	CS Blanc-Mesnil	1	-	-	17th	1993/94	1993/94
	Omnium Sports Monaco	1	-	-	17th	1993/94	1993/94
47	FF Issy	2	-	-	15th	2012/13	2014/15
	Stade Reims	1	- (d)	-	15th	2019/20	2019/20
49	Racing Flacé-lès-Mâcon	1	-	-	14th	1992/93	1992/93
50	AC Evreux	1	-	-	13	2007/08	2007/08
51	FC Félines Saint-Cyr	1	-	-	10	1999/00	1999/00
	AS Montigny-le-Bretonneux	1	-	-	10	2009/10	2009/10
	Toulouse Olympique Mirail	1	-	-	10	1992/93	1992/93
54	FC Tours	1	-	-	7th	2001/02	2001/02
	FF Nîmes Métropole Gard	1	-	-	7th	2015/16	2015/16
56	AS Muret	2	-	-	6th	2011/12	2013/14
57	Le Havre AC	0	-	-	0	2020/21

^(c) Only the championship titles and runners-up since the establishment of the league (1992/93) are given here.

^(d) The club (also) won one or more French championship titles in the time before the introduction of a uniform league.

^(e) Nowadays (since 2016) the club's female soccer players are again represented in the lower regional league operations.

Top scorer queens

Laëtitia Tonazzi

Lotta Schelin

season	Best shooter	society	Gates	Next best	society	Gates
2001/02	Marinette Pichon	Olympique Saint-Memmie	22nd	Hoda Lattaf	HSC Montpellier	20th
2002/03	Sandrine Brétigny	FC Lyon	26th	Hoda Lattaf	HSC Montpellier	25th
2003/04	Claire Morel	FC Lyon	18th	Hoda Lattaf	HSC Montpellier	17th
2004/05	Marinette Pichon	Juvisy FCF	38	Élodie Ramos	HSC Montpellier	17th
2005/06	Marinette Pichon	Juvisy FCF	36	Hoda Lattaf	HSC Montpellier	16
2006/07	Sandrine Brétigny	Olympique Lyon	42	Hoda Lattaf	Olympique Lyon	26th
2007/08	Laëtitia Tonazzi	Juvisy FCF	27	Sandrine Brétigny	Olympique Lyon	25th
2008/09	Katia	Olympique Lyon	27	Sandrine Brétigny	Olympique Lyon	22nd
2009/10	Eugénie Le Sommer	Stade Briochin	19th	Marie-Laure Delie	HSC Montpellier	18th
2010/11	Laëtitia Tonazzi	Juvisy FCF	20th	Sandrine Brétigny	Olympique Lyon	19th
2011/12	Eugénie Le Sommer	Olympique Lyon	22nd	Lotta Schelin	Olympique Lyon	20th
2012/13	Lotta Schelin	Olympique Lyon	24	Camille Abily Eugénie Le Sommer	Olympique Lyon Olympique Lyon	20th
2013/14	Gaëtane Thiney	Juvisy FCF	25th	Marie-Laure Delie	Paris SG	24
2014/15	Lotta Schelin	Olympique Lyon	34	Eugénie Le Sommer	Olympique Lyon	29
2015/16	Ada Hegerberg	Olympique Lyon	33	Cristiane	Paris SG	15th
2016/17	Ada Hegerberg Eugénie Le Sommer	Olympique Lyon Olympique Lyon	20th	Marie-Laure Delie	Paris SG	16
2017/18	Ada Hegerberg	Olympique Lyon	31	Marie-Antoinette Katoto	Paris SG	21st
2018/19	Marie-Antoinette Katoto	Paris SG	22nd	Ada Hegerberg	Olympique Lyon	20th
2019/20	Marie-Antoinette Katoto	Paris SG	16 (f)	Ada Hegerberg	Olympique Lyon	14 (f)

^(f) with only 16 instead of 22 match days

There are no seasonal overviews of the most accurate players of the previous nine seasons of the N1A.

Award for the best female player

Sandrine Soubeyrand

Sonia Bompastor

Nowadays two individual awards are given. On the one hand, since 2001, this has been the trophy of the players' union UNFP (Trophée UNFP du football) for the best D1 player of the season. Since 2010, the FFF national association has also been honoring the best female footballer in France's top division (Challenge FFF de la meilleure joueuse) .

season	Award from the UNFP	society	Award from the FFF	society
2000/01	Anne Zenoni	Toulouse OAC	not yet assigned
2001/02	Marinette Pichon	Olympique Saint-Memmie
2002/03	Sandrine Soubeyrand	Juvisy FCF
2003/04	Sonia Bompastor	HSC Montpellier
2004/05	Marinette Pichon (2.)	Juvisy FCF
2005/06	Camille Abily	HSC Montpellier
2006/07	Camille Abily (2nd)	Olympique Lyon
2007/08	Sonia Bompastor (2nd)	Olympique Lyon
2008/09	Louisa Nécib	Olympique Lyon
2009/10	Eugénie Le Sommer	Stade Briochin	Eugénie Le Sommer	Stade Briochin
2010/11	Élise Bussaglia	Paris Saint-Germain	Élise Bussaglia	Paris Saint-Germain
2011/12	Gaëtane Thiney	Juvisy FCF	Julie Morel	EA Guingamp
2012/13	Lotta Schelin	Olympique Lyon	Shirley Cruz Traña	Paris Saint-Germain
2013/14	Gaëtane Thiney (2nd)	Juvisy FCF	Gaëtane Thiney	Juvisy FCF
2014/15	Eugénie Le Sommer (2nd)	Olympique Lyon	Sofia Jakobsson	HSC Montpellier
2015/16	Amel Majri	Olympique Lyon	Ada Hegerberg	Olympique Lyon
2016/17	Dzsenifer Marozsán	Olympique Lyon	Eugénie Le Sommer (2nd)	Olympique Lyon
2017/18	Dzsenifer Marozsán (2nd)	Olympique Lyon	Dzsenifer Marozsán	Olympique Lyon
2018/19	Dzsenifer Marozsán (3rd)	Olympique Lyon	Dzsenifer Marozsán (2nd)	Olympique Lyon

If necessary, the number of times the player received this award is given in brackets after the name.

See also

• Soccer in France
• List of the highest national soccer divisions

literature

• Xavier Breuil: Histoire du football féminin en Europe. Nouveau Monde, Paris 2011, ISBN 978-2-84736-622-8 .
• Pascal Grégoire-Boutreau: Au bonheur des filles. Cahiers intempestifs, Saint-Étienne 2003, ISBN 2-911698-25-8 .
• Audrey Keysers, Maguy Nestoret Ontanon: Football féminin. La femme est l'avenir du foot. Le bord de l'eau, Lormont 2012, ISBN 978-2-35687-185-5 .
• Laurence Prudhomme-Poncet: Histoire du football féminin au XXe siècle. L'Harmattan, Paris 2003, ISBN 2-7475-4730-2 .

Web links

• Information on the website of the French Association
• footofeminin.fr (“Foot au féminin”), exclusively for French women's football
• footdelles.com (“Foot d'elles”), also a French women's football site
• “Ni buts ni soumises” , an informative blog on cahiersdufootball.net about French women's football

Notes and evidence

1. ^ Fédération Française de Football (ed.): 100 dates, histoires, objets du football français. Tana, o. O. 2011, ISBN 978-2-84567-701-2 , p. 121
2. ↑ See the list of FSFSF champions up to 1932 at rsssf.com, in which, however, the first event in 1917/18 is missing.
3. ↑ These “pioneering years” of women's football in France are documented in detail in Prudhomme-Poncet, Histoire du football féminin , 2003, pp. 21–175, and also in Grégoire-Boutreau Au bonheur des filles , 2003, pp. 10–29. Breuil, Histoire du football féminin en Europe , 2011, pp. 17–128, puts the French development up to the early 1950s in the pan-European context, Paul Dietschy ( Histoire du football. Perrin, Paris 2014, 2nd ed. Ed. , ISBN 978-2-262-04712-2 , pp. 603-611) in the global.
4. ↑ Prudhomme-Poncet, Histoire du football féminin , 2003, pp. 179ff.
5. ↑ Breuil, Histoire du football féminin en Europe , 2011, in particular pp. 133-136; similar to Prudhomme-Poncet, Histoire du football féminin , 2003, pp. 179ff., which, however, mentions a single, local women's football episode from the late 1940s.
6. ↑ Grégoire-Boutreau, Au bonheur des filles , 2003, on pp. 242-250, who also presents all French national champions in detail on pp. 50-91, provides an overview of all the championship finals from 1974 onwards and of all the league's final tables up to 2003 .
7. ↑ Grégoire-Boutreau, Au bonheur des filles , 2003, p. 124
8. ↑ Quoting from the article "L'étonnant défi de l'AS Étrœungt" in Le football au féminin, no. 1, Ed. Nouveauté, Paris 1983, p. 17
9. ^ Quote from Marilou Duringer after Grégoire-Boutreau, Au bonheur des filles , 2003, p. 224.
10. ^ Prudhomme-Poncet, Histoire du football féminin. 2003, p. 284 f.
11. ^ Breuil, Histoire du football féminin en Europe , 2011, pp. 272–275.
12. ↑ Article “ PSG – Lyon: The Women's War ” from November 7, 2014 in Le Monde
13. ↑ see the Palmarès of the U19 championships at footofeminin.fr
14. ↑ See the message “ Le Graët wants to strengthen women's football ” from July 14, 2011 at L'Équipe; France Football, July 19, 2011, p. 39.
15. ↑ According to verse D1 avec des clubs de Ligue 1? of September 25, 2014 at footofeminin.fr only 14 out of 20 first and twelve of 20 second division clubs met this requirement (see the table at the end of the article).
16. ↑ see the main points of this plan in the article “ Le plan de féminisation de la FFF ” of March 11, 2012 on the FFF website
17. ↑ The Nouvel Observateur already dealt with this fact in detail in 2011 in his article “ Behind a women's soccer team there is always a male coach ”.
18. ↑ see the article “Un sifflet français au Mondial” in France Football of January 6, 2015, p. 23.
19. ↑ Grégoire-Boutreau, Au bonheur des filles , 2003, pp. 65 and 71.
20. ↑ according to the article " Change of club - reminder of some regulations " from July 10, 2015 at footofeminin.fr
21. ↑ see the answer to the first question in the interview with Julie Morel at Ouest-France on February 7, 2013
22. ↑ Article "Féminines: transfert interdit" in France Football of January 21, 2015, p. 12
23. ↑ Article " D1F: Lending - the new, seductive option on the transfer market " from December 5, 2017 at footofeminin.fr
24. ↑ Therefore, for example, Paris Saint-Germain had hoped in 2013 that the Costa Rican Shirley Cruz Traña would apply for French citizenship so that the club could sign another American; see the article "Shirley Cruz bientôt naturalisée française et un milieu de plus?" of July 6, 2013 at footofeminin.fr
25. ↑ ^{a b} " UEFA: Women's football across the national associations 2017 "
26. ↑ Prudhomme-Poncet, Histoire du football féminin , 2003, p. 283
27. ↑ Prudhomme-Poncet, Histoire du football féminin , 2003, p. 282
28. ↑ The wording of the corresponding FFF regulations is available here as a PDF .
29. ↑ ^{a b c} see the article “La D1 féminine aura son label” from November 14, 2013 at L'Équipe
30. ↑ ^{a b} see the article "En France, le football féminin, c'est maintenant" in L'Express on May 17, 2012
31. ↑ According to “Quel est le salaire d'une footballeuse professionnelle?” At footballeuse.fr; the current (2014/15) List of top footballers of both sexes who come to enjoy a FFF co-payment, can be found on the gouv.fr government side .
32. ↑ Article "La résistance s'organise" in France Football of April 23, 2013, p. 41
33. ↑ Laurence Prudhomme-Poncet ( Histoire du football féminin , 2003, p. 286) calls it “a bit premature” that the daily newspaper Liberation decided in 2001 to switch the women's department from Entente Montpellier Le Crès to local rivals MHSC as the “first professional women's team” was born “Designated.
34. ↑ see the article “Rigoberte M'Bah priée d'aller jouer ailleurs” of January 20, 2012 in Liberation
35. ↑ see the article “Une Clermontoise réalise le premier transfer payant du football féminin entre deux clubs français” from July 5, 2013 at lamontagne.fr
36. ↑ see the article Benstiti: "Deux des meilleures joueuses du monde à leur poste" of July 2, 2013 at Le Parisien
37. ↑ " Griedge Mbock, record transfer for over 100,000 euros " from June 4, 2015 at francefootball.fr
38. ↑ Age statistics according to the article " Inédit - Une Saison en chiffres (partie II) " from May 12, 2015 at footofeminin.fr
39. ↑ Names, numbers and quotations in this section come from the article “New Eldorado of Foreign Women” from January 8, 2015 at footofeminin.fr, unless other sources are given.
40. ↑ see in particular the section “Is the D1 the Eldorado of women's football?” In this article from September 14, 2014 at cahiersdufootball.net.
41. ↑ ^{a b} " The season afterwards " from September 4, 2019 at cahiersdufootball.net
42. ↑ Article " OL wins the hit " from November 16, 2019 at footofeminin.fr
43. ↑ see the article “ The audience reports on the spot ” from June 19, 2014, supplemented by the game data sheets Lyon vs. Paris from November 1, 2014 and September 28, 2015 , all at footofeminin.fr
44. ↑ according to the program on the first day of the match at footofeminin.fr
45. ↑ see the match day preview from September 26, 2015 at footofeminin.fr
46. ↑ see for example the French TV report on the last game of champions FC Lyon in May 1993 at ina.fr
47. ↑ Prudhomme-Poncet, Histoire du football féminin , 2003, p. 256
48. ↑ to “La D1 féminine pleine lucarne” from August 4, 2011 at sports.fr
49. ↑ according to "Les droits TV de la division 1 féminine de football sont en hausse" from September 5, 2012 at sportstrategies.com and "Foot féminin en France - EUROSPORT et FRANCE 4 veulent y croire" from September 6, 2012 at sportbuzzbusiness.fr
50. ↑ occasionally also in the punctuated spelling Femmes 2 Foot
51. ↑ see the article “C'était le moment pour lancer cette émission” from September 24, 2014 at footofeminin.fr
52. ↑ Article " TV: The Bleues at M6, the D1 one hundred percent in Canal + programs " from November 14, 2017 at footofeminin.fr; In addition to the D1F matches, the contract with Canal + also includes international matches for the female A and B youth and junior national teams.
53. ↑ it contains the "special case" CNFE Clairefontaine
54. ↑ For comparison: In the German Bundesliga , the ratio in the same season is 2: 2: 8.
55. ↑ according to the information ( memento of the original dated February 11, 2015 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. on Soyaux's club page 
56. ↑ Article "Soyaux: Haut les filles, haut les filles" in France Football from November 14, 2017, here p. 39
57. ↑ see the presentation of the sponsors ( memento of the original from October 7, 2014 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and not yet checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. on the club side 
58. ↑ see the article "Nous avons besoin d'une vraie révolution culturelle" ( Memento of the original of February 11, 2015 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The  archive link was automatically inserted and not yet checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. from February 10, 2015 at foot81.fr
59. ↑ see the article “The women of AS Algrange transfer to FC Metz” from May 29, 2014 at footofeminin.fr
60. ↑ after the article “The resistance is forming” in France Football of April 23, 2013, p. 41, and this message on footofeminin.fr of November 15, 2013
61. ↑ Article "Chambly: Oh oui!" In France Football of May 27, 2014, p. 41
62. ↑ In addition to the five D1F teams that belong to a club with a professional men's team, there were nine other women's clubs in the second division (D2F) in 2015/16: OSC Lille , Stade Reims , FC Metz , AS Nancy , FCO Dijon , FC Lorient , Girondins Bordeaux , FC Toulouse and Olympique Marseille .
63. ↑ see the list of the association's provisional budgets from August 8, 2014 in Le Parisien
64. ↑ France Football, March 19, 2013, pp. 4-18
65. ↑ Article “Already again the island!” In the Kicker special issue Bundesliga 2018/19, p. 267
66. ↑ Prudhomme-Poncet, Histoire du football féminin , 2003, pp. 274–277, devotes a chapter full of concrete examples to this
67. ↑ see the article “Séminaire d'accompagnement à la structuration des clubs à la FFF” from April 15, 2015 at footofeminin.fr
68. ^ Announcement from the LFP of October 10, 2018 at lfp.fr; however, the amount is not disclosed therein.
69. ↑ Article “ A naming for the championship ” from June 21, 2019 at footofeminin.fr
70. ↑ ^{a b} all figures for the 2013/14 season according to the detailed statistics available on the association's website (in the PDF on pages 9-11)
71. ↑ see the results of the FFF Federal Assembly on June 20, 2015 and the specific schedule for the “transition season” 2015/16 at footofeminin.fr
72. ↑ see the article "La D2 passe de 36 à 24 équipes en 2016" from December 13, 2014 at footofeminin.fr
73. ↑ see the article on qualifications and group composition of the CIR from April 22, 2015 at footofeminin.fr
74. ↑ An informative article ("Brétigny contre Tonazzi, 10 ans d'histoire") about the most successful D1F goal scorers can be found at cahiersdufootball.net.
75. ↑ The name is a playful reference to the women's rights organization Ni Putes Ni Soumises ("Neither hookers nor submissive"), where the word putes (prostitute) is replaced by the similar sounding buts (goals).

This article was added to the list of excellent articles in this version on February 7, 2015 .