UNFP

The players' union set it up. Footballers whose contracts had expired in June found themselves without a club and without a training ground, and from 1990 the Union Nationale des Footballeurs Professionnels began running a close-season camp to fix all three at once. The union itself dates from 16 November 1961, founded in Paris.

What emerged is a squad that exists for a few weeks a year and then dissolves. UNFP FC enters no league, holds no trophy and keeps no permanent registration. It plays friendlies — Dijon, Metz, Red Star FC 93, Paris FC have all provided opposition.

The base is the Complexe Leonard de Vinci at Lisses, south of Paris, a hotel and spa that doubles as a training centre. There are no terraces, no capacity figure, nothing to count. Pascal Bollini has run the camp since 2004.

The camp still cannot do the one thing it is set up to enable: sign anybody. It can keep a player fit, put him in front of scouts and get him through 90 minutes against a professional side, but the contract has to come from somewhere else.