La Roche VF
La Roche Vendée Football or La Roche VF for short is a French football club from La Roche-sur-Yon .
The club colors are light and dark blue. The league team competes in the city's Stade Henri-Desgrange , which has a capacity of around 9,000 spectators.
history
The story of the club that emerged on July 1, 1989 from a merger of two local rivals is essentially the story of its two predecessors, FC and AEPB.
FC La Roche-sur-Yon
The football department of this multi- sport club, often referred to as Football Club Yonnais , was established in 1933. Until the early 1980s, it was the more successful of the city's two “big clubs”. From 1961 he played for the first time briefly in the top amateur league, to which he returned in 1972. The club's policy at the time was characterized by a system of intensive training and promotion of young talent: ten of the eleven regular players in the 1971/72 promotion season came from their own youth. In 1983, the FC was also the first to be promoted to the second division , in which, however, he only stayed for this one season . The season had started promisingly; the club with the lowest budget of all 37 second division clubs defeated Olympique Marseille 2-0 at its home premiere in front of more than 6,200 spectators at the Stade Henri-Desgrange . In the further course of the decade until the merger of the two competitors, the FC rose to the fourth highest division. In the cup competition for the Coupe de France , the FC made it into the national main round three times, even reaching the sixteenth-finals in 1983 , but in the following season, as a second division, was out in the first round without a hitch against an honorary division . In this season and the 1980/81 season, both clubs from La Roche-sur-Yon were in the national cup championship.
AEPB La Roche
The Amicale des Écoles Publiques du Bourg-sous-la-Roche or AEPB La Roche for short was founded in 1947. The footballers of this "Circle of Friends of the Public School System" from Bourg-sous-la-Roche , which was incorporated into La Roche-sur-Yon in 1964 , first reached the top amateur league in 1976, after three ascents within four years. Unlike rival FC, AEPB recruited their players from all over the Vendée , a "region with a particularly high density of talent". It was then also this club whose footballers were the first to represent their city in the French Cup championship in 1978/79 and did so nine more times in the 1980s - almost annually. In the summer of 1984, when FC were relegated from the second division, AEPB La Roche was promoted there, also initially only held one season, but returned there in 1986 and held the class until the merger in 1989.
La Roche VF
The concentration of forces meant that LRVF remained in second place until 1993 - then Division 2 was reduced from 36 to 22 teams and was only open to professional clubs - albeit at the price of a budget deficit of over 3.5 million. Francs . From 1996 only fourth class, in the early 21st century it even sank into the lowlands of the sixth division at times. In the cup competition, La Roches footballers were able to build on the successes of the APEB for longer by qualifying for the main round in nine of the 13 years after the merger, which they last succeeded in 2013/14 .
League affiliation and achievements
The club or its two predecessors have never had professional status and have never played in the highest French league , but were for nine years (1983/84 FC, 1984/85 and from 1986 to 1989 the AEPB, 1989 to 1993 LRVF) represented in the second division . The best placement in the league, which at the time consisted of two seasons, was a twelfth place in the 1990/91 season , after the merger.
In the French Football Cup, the teams from La Roche-sur-Yon took part in a total of twenty main rounds between 1978/79 and most recently 2001/02. This was achieved twice by FC, nine times by AEPB and nine times by LRVF. They were particularly successful in the 1980s when the FC reached the sixteenth finals one and the AEPB four times. The latter even made it to among the 16 best teams in the country in the 1987/88 edition , but had luck in the first two rounds with a fourth and a fifth division and were defeated in the second round against Stade Quimper , a second division. The following year , Olympique Lyon only prevented AEPB La Roche from reaching the round of 16 again in extra time for the second leg.
For the 2013/14 season, La Roche VF was promoted from the Division d'Honneur back to the fifth division (CFA2) .
Well-known former players and coaches
- Ludovic Batelli , player (1989–1991)
- Daniel Éon , 1961–? Player at FC
- Joachim Marx , coach 1988–1990
- Jocelyn Gourvennec , coach 2008-2010
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