Boulogne

In December 1898 a group of young athletes in Boulogne-sur-Mer formed Union sportive boulonnaise. The club kept that name until 1969, when it became Union sportive du Grand Boulogne, and later settled into its current identity as US Boulogne Côte d'Opale.

Regional silverware came first and came often: the Maritime championship five times between 1904 and 1922, the Northern championship in 1926. National recognition took longer. Boulogne reached the last eight of the Coupe de France in 1937, then spent decades mostly outside the professional tiers. That changed under Philippe Montanier, who took over in 2004 with the club sitting in the CFA, the fourth division, and within five seasons had it in Ligue 1. The promotion run went through a second-place finish in the National in 2006–07 and third in Ligue 2 in 2008–09. The single Ligue 1 season that followed, 2009–10, ended in relegation with a 19th-place finish.

Boulogne has stayed below that level since, working its way back up through the lower divisions and winning the National 2, the fourth tier, in 2024. Matches against USL Dunkerque are still marked out separately from the rest of the calendar as the Derby de la Côte d'Opale.

Home games are played at Stade de la Libération, built between 1949 and 1952 and opened on 1 June 1956, now holding 15,204 in the club's red and black. It stands not far from where those first winter training sessions were organised more than a century ago.