Laval

Pierre-Emerick Aubameyang was born in Laval and wore the club's shirt for a single season, 2006-07, before the path took him elsewhere; his father, Pierre, had played there before him. That single detail says something about how the club works: it raises players and lets them go. Jean-Marc Piton logged 304 games in the top flight for Laval, a club record that has stood since his playing days, and Franck Leboeuf spent time in the side before going on to win the World Cup in 1998.

The club, formally Stade Lavallois Mayenne Football Club, was founded on 17 July 1902 and has never left the city whose name it carries. The shirt turned orange in 1923 — the shade catalogued as Tango — and the colour gave the club its nickname, Les Tango, which doubles as the name of its supporters' group. Two black-and-red and green-and-white kits came before it and were dropped.

Domestically, two French Cup semi-finals ended the same way — a single goal conceded, first to Paris Saint-Germain in 1993, then to Nice in 1997. A financial squeeze in 2005-06 dropped the club into the third tier; it took until 2009 to work back up to Ligue 2, and in 2021-22 Laval won the Championnat National outright.

The fixtures against Angers and Le Mans carry the derby name officially, while the meetings with Rennes and Nantes, 78 and 69 respectively over the years, never earned the label — a quirk of the regional boundaries that put Laval's closest rivals just outside Brittany's line. Games are still played at the Stade Francis-Le Basser, which holds 11,107 seats.