I've always found it curious that a city like Paris with it's size and wealth would have so few elite football clubs within its environs. Lately i've been looking into the French lower leagues and seeing what the clubs in CFA and CFA2 are like (just curious, maybe one day if i have enough money i'll buy a club and run it ). Which leads me to FC Versailles 78: http://fcversailles78.fr/ It's a club located in the wealthy Paris suburbs and lucky enough to be an official FFF regional formation academy. Their training facilities are quality, they have solid youth talent and they have a 6000 seat stadium. Yet their Senior team plays in the Division Superior Regionale Ile-de-France which is in the 7th tier of French football! What gives?
Créteil and Paris FC are 2 Paris area teams in the 3rd division. I never heard of FC Versailles 78 but I know there are quite a few Paris teams in CFA and CFA 2. I only really care about Racing and Red Star and hope to see them become professional again one day. These teams have lousy support because Parisiens are terrible football fans and dont seem to wanna support lower division teams.
i think your main misapprehension is thinking their facilities are that exceptional. i can think of half a dozen clubs in the greater lyon area who can boast similar.
Well, admittedly i don't know that much about the club, just what i've read about them on their website and on wiki. From the sounds of it they have a decent infrastructure, especially considering the level that their senior team plays. I guess what i'm trying to figure out is should this club be playing at such a low level? Have they been mismanaged? Are they lacking ambition? What has them stuck playing at a beer league level?
This is a random club... As it has been said, Paris FC, Créteil (3rd division) or Red Star and Racing (which are clubs with a great history) have far mor chances to play at top lvl one day.
again, Division Superior Regionale Ile-de-France, while not pro, is no beer league! in IdF this is probably equivalent to most regions' Division Honneur. now, promotion départementale, that would be a beer league! your point about ambition is probably correct, but not having the ambition to play in national leagues doesn't make you a bad club. even playing in CFA2 takes money few collectivities can justify forking out. when i see their benjamins on the front page of their site i imagine versailles' priority is training youth. the emphasis is on community service and top-level regional play is perfectly ample for that purpose. the stadium you see likely serves versailles for more than this club. it's probably almost empty for senior matches despite free admission (unless they get a good way in to the coupe, in which case they're required to monitor ingress) but there are probably a couple of tournaments and maybe some track and field or even non-sporting events where the seating is useful.
I visited a Paris FC match once. 300 spectators in a 20.000 seater stadium and a singing crowd of 4 of which the capo still felt the need to use a megaphone. Parc des Princes always is an impressive experiene, but +/- 40.000 on 11 million inhabitants stays far behind. I always had the impression it might have something to do with the "classy parisiennes" do not feel connected with the rather bad name of the PSG-following. Yet it seems to be a French thing instead of just a feature of Paris. A city the size of Marseille probably would have had more than one team when located in England as well.
The second-tier Marseille clubs are known even by not-locals (Endoume and Consolat) but besides belonging to lower leagues they exist essentially for the folklore. France is not a country of football. Gathering crowds for clubs below 2nd division is extremely difficult - unless they play Marseille or Lyon in Cup.
They will be sharing their stadium with the Stade Francais rugby team this year because SF's stadium is being renovated/expanded. It will be interesting to see what kinda crowds SF will draw at Charlety thus year. Its not a good stadium for soccer really.