Thionville Lusitanos

Fritz Walter spent 1943 in Lorraine wearing the shirt of TSG Diedenhofen, a Wehrmacht conscript killing time between postings before he went home to captain West Germany to the 1954 World Cup. It is the kind of detail a club carries quietly for decades, because the club itself has rarely stood still long enough to be sure of its own name. What began in 1905 as Fußball-FC Diedenhofen, under German rule in a city then called Diedenhofen, became La Sportive Thionvilloise after the First World War, was renamed again under occupation in the Second, and reverted once peace returned. A bankruptcy in 1981 forced a further refounding as Thionville FC, and the identity familiar today dates only to 2 May 2021, when that club merged with the Portuguese-rooted Thionville AS Portugais Saint-François to form US Thionville Lusitanos.

The merger explains the grey and sky-blue colours and the "Lusitanos" nickname, and it has coincided with the club's sharpest run of form. Three promotions in three seasons carried them from Régional 2 to Régional 1, then to National 3, then to National 2, which they won in 2025–26 to reach Ligue 3 for the first time. The club had gone the best part of four decades without a title of any weight since winning Division 4 in 1984, so the recent sequence stands apart from most of its history, which ran through regional honours: the Lorraine Championship and the Coupe de Lorraine, both won half a dozen times since the 1920s.

In the Coupe de France, the club's best moment came in 1980–81, reaching the quarter-finals after eliminating opponents before falling to Martigues following a draw; more recently they held Marseille to a draw in the Round of 32 in 2023–24. The Stade de Guentrange has been widened for life in Ligue 3, now holding beyond 4,000. Rémi Himbert, who came through the club's academy, left for Olympique Lyonnais in 2023 — the kind of departure a club with a fast-rising first team hopes will become a habit rather than an exception.