Luzenac Ariège Pyrénées

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Luzenac Ariège Pyrénées , or Luzenac AP for short ( Union Sportive Luzenac until 2012 ), is the name of a French football club from the 600-strong community of Luzenac , in the Pyrenees, ten kilometers west of Ax-les-Thermes in the Ariège department . Until mid-2014, Luzenac was the club from the municipality with the lowest population in the four highest leagues in France.

The club's president is Alain Canale, the fighting team is trained by Sébastien Mignotte. (As of November 2014)

history

Main stand of the stadium in Luzenac

It was founded in 1936 under the name Union Sportive des Talcs de Luzenac ; the addition to the name “Talcs” refers to the mining and processing of talc in the region and the close personal ties between the association and the talc factory in Luzenac to this day. In 1992 the club adopted the name US Luzenac . The club colors are blue and red; the club's coat of arms represents a deer in front of a high mountain silhouette . The league eleven played their home games in the Stade Paul-Fédou , which was built in 1971 and has a capacity of 1,200. Virtually all of the players in the squad in the 2009/10 season lived and trained in Toulouse , just over an hour away by car ; they only came to Luzenac for home games. The fact that the "Bergdorfverein" stayed in the third division for five years is attributed in particular to the skill of coach Christophe Pélissier - who worked in Luzenac from 2006 to 2014 - with a mini annual budget of 2 million euros, talented at lower-class clubs or to discover professional reserve teams and bring them to the Pyrenees. In addition, Pélissier could count on the increasing time and financial support of the former national goalkeeper Fabien Barthez , who himself comes from the Ariège department.

In 2012 the association took on its current name; Since the end of 2012 he has played his home games a good 30 kilometers down the valley in the Stade Jean-Noël Fondère from Foix, which can hold around 3,000 spectators . If Luzenac AP had been promoted to the second division, the team would have had to move again because the place in Foix does not meet the requirements. In addition, the club negotiated early on with the presidium of Stade Toulousain about a joint use of the Stade Ernest-Wallon .

Following the promotion to the second division in 2014, Luzenac was initially denied this for financial reasons. The club filed an objection, which the sporting authorities rejected. On August 1st, a few hours before the start of the new second division season, a civil court ruled that the association had to re-examine its negative decision within a week. After the regional association Luzenac subsequently approved membership in the second division, the professional league association LFP refused to implement this - this time on the grounds that the Stade Ernest-Wallon did not meet the safety requirements. Thereupon LAP tried, which at this time was not taken into account in the second or third division schedule, to stop the Ligue 2 game operation in court. After this application was rejected, the club demanded to be subsequently included in the third division, which was opposed by several other third division clubs. Since the association also saw legal problems in this, the first LAP team - that was the previous reserve eleven, because the entire second division squad, including the successful coach Christophe Pélissier (and also sports director Barthez) - had only left the club on September 20, 2014 Point game - in the Division d'Honneur Régionale , the seventh highest French division.

At the end of 2014 LAP was fighting for its economic survival; a quarter of the season's budget of 180,000 euros had not yet been covered at this point. That is why the league team has returned to the Stade Paul-Fédou , where the women's and youth teams also play their games; In addition, the club had sent a request to all French professional clubs, but only AS Monaco had responded to this until the beginning of November and had sent two complete sets of football addresses to the Pyrenees. In 2015 LAP was promoted to the sixth division.
The story of Luzenac's non-promotion to the second division did not come to a legal end until May 2017 - albeit only temporarily - when a civil court in Toulouse ruled that the refusal of promotion was lawful in 2014. However, the LFP then had to pay the association 15,000 euros "compensation for non-material damage" (dommage au titre de préjudice moral) - a merely symbolic amount in view of the fact that Luzenac granted more than 3.5 million euros from the television money alone would have. Almost at the same time, Luzenac's long-time successful coach Christophe Pélissier achieved the unexpected promotion to the top division of France with SC Amiens .

The association appealed against the verdict of the Toulouse court, and in August 2019 the appellate court in Bordeaux actually overturned its 2017 ruling. These judges assessed the matter in such a way that the LFP had not had the right to promote Luzenac five years earlier deny.

League affiliation

The club has never played first-class ( Division 1 , renamed Ligue 1 since 2002 ). In 2009 he was promoted to the third highest division , in which he was previously only represented in the 1980/81 season. With the leap into the second division in 2014 , Luzenac would have achieved professional status for the first time in the club's history; instead he had to compete in the seventh highest division, from which he returned to the Division d'Honneur in 2015 .

successes

Well-known former players

Web links

Remarks

  1. ↑ France Football, September 8, 2009, pp. 28/29
  2. ↑ France Football of December 3, 2013, p. 41
  3. ↑ see the article "Last curtain in the Stade Paul-Fédou" at foot-national.com
  4. ↑ see the corresponding message from April 25, 2014 at francefootball.fr
  5. ↑ Luzenac sees signs of Ligue 2 on lequipe.fr
  6. ↑ Article "No ball for Cinderella" in France Football of September 2, 2014, p. 18
  7. ↑ see the article "Luzenac wants to suspend the championship" from August 11, 2014 at francefootball.fr
  8. ↑ Article “The Destroyed Fairy Tale” of September 9, 2014, pp. 34-37, and “Le syndrome Luzenac” of September 30, 2014, p. 40, both in France Football
  9. ↑ Article "Luzenac - his game for survival" in France Football from November 11, 2014, p. 36/37
  10. ^ Announcement "3,6 millions d'euros" in France Football of May 23, 2017, p. 8
  11. ↑ Article “Amiens, la fausse surprise” in France Football of May 23, 2017, pp. 38/39
  12. ↑ after the article " The Justice gives Luzenac right that should have competed in Ligue 2 " from August 31, 2019 at La Dépêche du Midi