Lyon

Olympique Lyonnais grew out of the football section of Lyon Olympique Universitaire, a multi-sport club whose players had turned out under that name since 1899. The section split off to stand on its own in 1950, taking the name OL and the nickname Les Gones — "the kids" in the local Franco-Provençal dialect. Home games are played at what is officially still called Parc Olympique Lyonnais, better known today as Groupama Stadium, in front of up to 59,186 supporters.

Lyon spent the 1960s and 1970s winning the Coupe de France without ever getting the better of Saint-Étienne or Marseille in the league, a gap that hardened into the Derby du Rhône with Saint-Étienne. By June 1987 the club was in the second division and in debt when Jean-Michel Aulas took over as president; he cleared the books, and Lyon returned to Ligue 1 in 1989, never to drop out again. In 2002 that stability turned into dominance: Lyon won the first of seven straight league titles, a run no other French club has matched, and reached the Champions League knockout rounds every year along the way. A semi-final followed in 2009-10. In 2007 both the men's and the women's teams were champions of France in the same season.

The academy that fed those years has kept working since the titles stopped. Karim Benzema is the only one of its graduates to have won the Ballon d'Or; Sidney Govou played through all seven championship campaigns. Alexandre Lacazette, Samuel Umtiti, Nabil Fekir, Houssem Aouar, Corentin Tolisso and Anthony Martial all passed through the same pipeline before moving on elsewhere. CIES Football Observatory ranks it second only to Real Madrid for graduates now playing in Europe's top five leagues.

In 2025 financial trouble brought an administrative relegation to Ligue 2, later overturned on appeal. John Textor, the club's majority owner, holds a 77.49% stake.