Valenciennes

Valenciennes spent last season in Ligue 2 and dropped out of it in 2024, landing back in the Championnat National — the tier the club knows well from the years it spent rebuilding after the scandal that nearly finished it.

That collapse traces to 1993, when the "VA-OM" match-fixing affair around Olympique de Marseille sent Valenciennes down to the third division; financial trouble later pushed them into the fourth tier altogether. It was a Valenciennes player, Jacques Glassmann, who exposed the bribery attempt that triggered the whole affair. The recovery took the rest of the decade: the Championnat de France Amateur in 1998, the National in 2005, then Ligue 2 in 2006, which opened an eight-year run in Ligue 1 before relegation in 2014.

The name on the shirt long predates any of that. Locals call the club "Val en Cygnes" — Val of the Swans — a phrase that gave rise to the nickname Les Athéniens and put a swan on the crest. The Stade du Hainaut holds just over 25,000.

Its best days on the pitch came earlier still: third place in the top division in both 1965 and 1966, under manager Robert Domergue. A Coupe de France final followed in 1951, lost 3-0 to Racing Club de Strasbourg. Among the players who passed through, Jean-Pierre Papin spent a season here before Marseille made him a name, and Roger Milla wore the shirt too.

Regionally, the fixture that matters most is against Racing Club de Lens, played under the banner of the Derby du Nord even though purists reserve that name for Lens against Lille. A first division title has never featured among the honours — Ligue 2 twice, National once, nothing higher.