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When European club competition was originally devised back in 1955, it was in the form of the Inter-Cities Fairs Cup, the predecessor to the UEFA Cup and Europa League.
As the name hints, the competition was originally designed to promote European trade fairs, and had a strict ‘one club per city’ rule. On that basis, this week’s Champions League clash between Arsenal and Paris Saint-Germain is, in basic terms, pretty much what you’d expect. On the basis of domestic titles won, this is the most successful club from each of Europe’s biggest two cities (discounting Russia) playing each other.
But there are several complications.
First, PSG might be France’s biggest club today, but back in 1955, they were 15 years away from being formed.
Second, Arsenal are one of seven top-flight London clubs in 2024-25, and have often finished behind Chelsea and Tottenham in recent seasons. PSG, meanwhile, have been the only top-flight Parisian club for the last three decades.
And when you look at the average attendances of the biggest clubs in both cities last season, the difference is stark.
So how have western Europe’s two major cities managed to do club football quite so differently? Or, more to the point, how come Paris can only support one major club?
The British clubs
London is unique, in terms of boasting so many major football clubs. If we’re slightly generous with our definition of city boundaries, Madrid and Lisbon often feature four top-flight sides, Athens effectively has five this season, while Istanbul can offer six. But London’s seven is highly unusual, and a further three London clubs — Charlton Athletic, Queens Park Rangers and the old Wimbledon FC — have previously played in the Premier League since its formation in 1992. Millwall featured in the top flight between 1988 and 1990 too.
Paris, on the other hand, is highly unusual in contributing just one top-flight club. The standard approach for big cities — Rome, Milan, Manchester — is generally two. But while Paris is an outlier in European terms, it isn’t in French terms. In 2024-25, France’s top-flight features 18 teams from 18 different settlements.
In keeping with many other major European cities, the first Parisian football clubs were formed by Britons. Sides with English-language names like the Standard Athletic Club and White Rovers came into existence in the final decade of the 19th century, and primarily featured British players. In comparison with Nordic, Mediterranean and central European nations, football was slow to develop in France. The authorities considered the rugby version of football to be more sophisticated, and association football was barely played in schools.
The first Olympic football tournament was held in Paris in 1900, and won by Great Britain — or, in reality, by an East London outfit named Upton Park. They had no link to nearby West Ham and were an amateur side, as professional athletes were, at that stage, not allowed to compete in the Olympics. Britain had a hold over Parisian football already.
Meanwhile, as noted by Chris Lee in his book Origin Stories, when France formed a cup competition in 1910, quality and interest was so low from within France that the tournament was an invitational event open to English sides. Therefore, while this was not the Coupe de France — which would be formed in 1917 — the first three winners of a major cup in Paris were Swindon Town, Clapton Orient (now Leyton Orient) and Fulham. They defeated Barnsley, Millwall and QPR respectively at the Parc des Princes, the same site PSG play on today, between 1910 and 1912.
In that sense, you can reasonably argue that London was more influential than Paris in the rise of French football. While the key figure in France’s belated footballing development was Henri Delaunay, the man after whom the European Championship trophy is named, he was inspired after attending the 1902 FA Cup final at Crystal Palace between Sheffield United and Southampton.
Scenes from the 1902 FA Cup final between Sheffield United and Southampton, an inspirational match for Henri Delaunay (Hulton Archive/Getty Images)
The French clubs
So what about actual Parisian clubs themselves?
Well, the other famous French football innovator of this time — and another with a major international trophy named after him — was Jules Rimet. He formed Red Star, a Parisian multi-sport club, in 1897. They are the only true constant of the last 125-odd years.
When Ligue 1 was originated in 1932, Red Star were one of four Parisian clubs in the top flight. The others were Club Francais (as the name suggests, the first Parisian club formed by French players, and represented France at the aforementioned 1900 Olympics), Cercle Athletique de Paris and Racing Club de Paris.
But these clubs struggled to grow. The Tour de France was created in 1903 and cycling was unquestionably the biggest sport in France. Rowing and gymnastics were also favoured, and rugby was still more popular. Football was, in contrary to what was happening in England, not the sport of the working class — it was favoured by the anglophile liberal metropolitan elite of the early 20th century. Paris was clearly the centre of that, but the game was treated as a pastime rather than to build a town around.
Cycling became France’s most important sport in the 20th century, not football (AFP via Getty Images)
Intra-city rivalries didn’t develop anywhere in France. With some early French competitions only accepting one club per region, combined with minimal public support and a reliance on local councils for income and building stadia, French clubs found that mergers were more conducive to success than city rivalries. Of the aforementioned four clubs, Club Francais were relegated from the inaugural Ligue 1 season and essentially ceased to exist after a merger in 1935. Cercle Athletique de Paris were also quickly relegated, managed another three decades and then also fell victim to a merger, becoming an amateur side.
It was really only Red Star and Racing Club which survived.
Red Star are more notable for being a left-wing club than a successful one, attracting a committed cult support and experiencing a turbulent time on the pitch. In the 21st century, they’ve competed at every level between the sixth and the second tiers.
Racing Club, meanwhile, were briefly managed in the 1930s by Jimmy Hogan — referred to as ‘the most influential coach in football history’ by Jonathan Wilson in his history of football tactics, Inverting The Pyramid — and won a single Ligue 1 title three years after his departure in 1936. They suffered serious financial problems in the 1960s and tumbled through the divisions, but were revived by a famous French businessman, Jean-Luc Lagardere, in the 1980s. He was most notable for his stewardship of Formula 1 team Matra, who won the world championship in 1969.
Lagardere threw money at the side, signings the likes of David Ginola, Luis Fernandez, Pierre Littbarski and Enzo Francescoli, and even appointed Artur Jorge as manager immediately after he’d led Porto to the European Cup in 1987. Lagardere was serious about Racing Club, although it attracted few supporters. After a desperate attempt to increase the profile of the club, and his brand, by renaming it Matra Racing, Lagardere eventually conceded defeat and withdrew his financial support. The club was relegated from Ligue 1 in 1990, and financial problems meant they were double-relegated to the third tier.
David Ginola playing for Matra Racing in the 1980s (Marc Francotte/TempSport/Corbis via Getty Images)
There’s a wider question about quite how football-crazy France is, compared to other European nations. The country didn’t really capitalise on the national side’s fine performance in finishing third at World Cup 1958. Then the national side didn’t qualify for a major tournament between 1966 and 1978. David Goldblatt, in his seminal book The Ball is Round, writes that, “While in Britain the new youth and musical cultures of the 1960s interacted with football, in France they stood as an alternative and an opponent. The counter-cultures of the late 1960s explicitly rejected football and its antiquated provincial hierarchies.”
The lift-off moments were the national team successes on Parisian soil in 1984 and 1998, but the boosts to domestic football — and in particular, domestic support — were negligible. The heroes of those sides soon moved abroad, if they hadn’t emigrated already, in part due to high taxation rates in France.
The modern clubs
So where did PSG come from?
Well, in a sense it was a new club, and in another sense it was another merger. While generally mocked for a relative lack of history — even before the Qatari takeover in 2011 — PSG are interesting in that they were born due to a crowdfunding campaign that attracted startup capital from 20,000 ‘supporters’ who were prepared to contribute to the foundation of a new club, although two wealthy businessmen were the figureheads.
Slightly confusingly, PSG was originally a merger of Paris FC (a club only formed the previous year) and Stade St Germain, although two years after the formation of PSG, Paris FC split from the new club because the city’s mayor refused to financially support a club which technically played outside the boundaries of the city. Paris FC re-established themselves as an independent entity, retained the club’s players and Ligue 1 status, while PSG were relegated to the third tier and had to work their way through the divisions again.
PSG’s first golden era came in the 1990s, when they were taken over by television giants Canal+, but attendances were always relatively modest considering the size of the city they represented. PSG, of course, are unlike any clubs in London in that they carry the name of the city, something they’ve been increasingly keen to take advantage of over the last decade. They’ve made ‘Paris’ more prominent on their crest, and like their name to be abbreviated to ‘PAR’ rather than ‘PSG’ on television graphics.
PSG won the Coupe de France three times in the 1990s (Christian Liewig/TempSport/Corbis via Getty Images)
Also worthy of mention is US Creteil, from the south-eastern suburbs of Paris. Formed in the 1930s, they played in the second tier regularly at the start of the century, and as recently as 2016, although even at that stage only attracted attendances of around 2000. They’re now back in the fourth tier.
But Parisian football is at its strongest point for many decades. Red Star won the third-tier Championnat National last season and are competing in Ligue 2 alongside Paris FC — who are currently top of the table, and aiming for promotion to Ligue 1 for the first time since relegation in 1979. Paris FC also have a strong women’s side, who regularly finish third in the Premiere Ligue (formerly known as Division 1 Feminine) behind PSG and Lyon, and eliminated Arsenal in the Champions League qualifiers last season, although they were soundly beaten by Manchester City this time around.
Red Star’s players celebrate winning the 2023-24 Championnat National (ANTONIN UTZ/AFP via Getty Images)
But those two clubs are still struggling for support. Paris FC averaged 5,500 last season, the 13th-highest attendance of the 20 clubs in Ligue 2. Red Star attracted around 3,500. And the reality is that their dual rise owes little to local support, and more to what many would consider the twin evils of modern football: state ownership and multi-club ownership.
Since 2020, Paris FC have been 20 per cent owned by by the Kingdom of Bahrain, who have seemingly been inspired by PSG’s Qatari-led dominance. Bahrain also act as the club’s main sponsors. “They join us for many objectives — mainly to help them to spread the image of Bahrain in France and Europe,” said director general Fabrica Herrault said in an interview upon the takeover.
The situation at Red Star also feels familiar, and somewhat unsatisfying given their long history of being a left-wing club. In May 2022 they were purchased by a US investment firm, 777 Partners, who also own the likes of Genoa, Hertha Berlin and Vasco da Gama. That attracted serious opposition from supporters, and their protests led to the postponement of a league match two years ago.
With a major fraud claim recently brought against 777, Red Star have been the subject of interest from another American, Steve Pagliuca, who owns Atalanta and is part-owner of the Boston Celtics. According to Bloomberg, Pagliuca “saw opportunities to invest in French football, where lower broadcast revenue has left clubs in need of capital.”
Average attendances in French football are currently positive. Ligue 1 recorded its highest-ever attendance last season of 27,100, while Ligue 2’s figure was 8,650, the best figure for 15 years — although that was boosted by two traditional giants, Saint-Etienne and Bordeaux, unusually, being in the second tier. The Ligue 2 stadiums, in general, were still only 55 per cent full.
In the capital, Paris FC’s 20,000-capacity stadium is only around a quarter full most weeks, while Red Star at least manage to make a modest 5,600-capacity ground in the northern suburbs look busy.
And while the nature of these clubs’ ownership is relatively modern, this is the history of Parisian football. The financial investment arrives before the support — if the support ever arrives at all. Of course, PSG have won 10 of the last 12 Ligue 1 titles and attract an average attendance of over 45,000, although there have been waves of unhappiness from supporters in recent years, and there are sporadic reports that Qatar might consider rethinking its investment.
Arsenal’s Ian Wright taking on PSG in March 1994 (Anton Want/Getty Images)
In general, French clubs are still struggling to generate their own money. Ligue 1’s new television rights deal represents a 12 per cent decrease on the previous agreement, and that’s a joint agreement with DAZN and BeIN Sports, the latter being Qatar-owned and surely less likely to stick around if Qatar isn’t investing in PSG. Unlike in England, domestic football has never become appointment television viewing in France.
If Paris FC continue their fine start to the campaign, next season there will be a top-flight Parisian derby in Ligue 1 for the first time since Racing Club’s relegation in 1990. But with seven top-flight sides, London boasts 42 derbies a year. The difference owes to many factors, including the historic structure of competitions and clubs’ reliance on local councils for funds.
But more than anything else, it’s simply a reflection on wildly varying levels of interest in football.
(Header photo: Tim Clayton/Corbis via Getty Images)
