Chambery

Gia Labadze wore the yellow and black in Chambéry, and the club has made a habit of drawing players far past the reach of most sides outside the top two divisions — Dean Grant, Felipe Berchesi, Danré Gerber, and Georgians Ilia Zedginidze and Beka Bitsadze among them.

The Stade Olympique Chambérien traces itself to 1896, to the Sport athlétique du lycée de Chambéry, and then to the Union sportive chambérienne formed two years later. What exists today took shape in 1943, when the Vichy regime ordered local clubs to merge — an origin the club has never hidden, even as it keeps 1896 as the year it points to. The Chambéry Savoie Stadium holds 5,285.

Silverware has come in short bursts rather than sustained runs: promotion through the Championnat de France de 2e division in 1956, a group title in the first division in 1980, the Challenge de l'Espérance in 1960, and more recently the Trophée Jean-Prat in 2016. A runner-up finish in the Championnat de France Honneur in 1947 came early, and another, in the Nationale, arrived in 2025.

Across the mountains from Chambéry sits Grenoble, and the meetings between the two carry the name Derby des Alpes — a fixture with no love lost, and the closest thing the club has to a rival worth building a season around.

What the record shows is a club that has spent most of its history circling the top flight without settling there: the 1980 title in the first division's group stage never turned into a lasting place among France's elite, and the 2025 runner-up finish left Chambéry still short of it.