Sochaux

Stade Auguste Bonal holds just over 20,000, a modest number for a club that once ruled French football. The ground sits close to the Peugeot works that gave the club its reason for being.

Jean-Pierre Peugeot founded Football Club Sochaux on 14 June 1928 for the men on the factory floor, a works team before anything else. A merger with AS Montbéliard two years later gave the club its current name, and in 1932 Sochaux turned professional, one of the first in the country to do so as France launched its first official championship. Two French titles, in 1935 and 1938, and a Coupe de France in 1937, won by a side marshalled by captain Étienne Mattler, who went on to lift the World Cup with France in 1938. Roger Courtois scored through those years and beyond, 192 league goals across a career that ran from 1933 to 1952.

Joël Bats and Franck Sauzée were sent into the France side that won the 1998 World Cup, and Jérémy Ménez on to Paris Saint-Germain. A second Coupe de France arrived in 2007, beating Marseille on penalties after a 1-1 draw, and a League Cup came three years earlier against Nantes, also settled from the spot.

Peugeot sold the club to the Chinese firm Ledus in 2015 for 7 million euros. The arrangement ended badly: relegation to the third tier in 2023 exposed the finances, and a group of local shareholders and supporters bought Sochaux back from its Chinese owners.