The Championnat de France amateur 2, commonly referred to as simply CFA 2 and formerly known as National 3, is a football league competition. The league serves as the fifth division of the French football league system behind Ligue 1, Ligue 2, Championnat National, and the Championnat de France amateur. Contested by 128 clubs, the Championnat de France amateur 2 operates on a system of promotion and relegation with the Championnat de France amateur and the regional leagues of the Division d'Honneur, the sixth division of French football. Seasons run from August to May, with teams in eight groups playing 34 games each totalling 2720 games in the season. Most games are played on Saturdays and Sundays, with a few games played during weekday evenings. Play is regularly suspended the last weekend before Christmas for two weeks before returning in the second week of January.
The Championnat France de amateur 2 was founded in 1993 as National 3 and lasted for five years before being converted to the current format used today. Most clubs that participate in the league are amateur clubs, hence the league name, but a small amount of clubs are semi-professional. The matches in the league attract on average between 200 and 400 spectators per match. However, this average is dragged down by the minuscule turnouts for the pros' home reserve matches. The current champions are the reserves of Metz who accumulated 107 points in Groupe C to earn promotion to the fourth division. The winners of the other seven groups were Calais, Aubervilliers, Monts d'Or Azergues, the reserves of Monaco, Béziers, Le Poiré-sur-Vie, and the reserves of Lorient, respectively. All seven clubs, alongside the champions and the four-best runner-up clubs, earned promotion to the Championnat de France amateur.
Read more about Championnat De France Amateur 2: History and Format
Famous quotes containing the words france and/or amateur:
“The bugle-call to arms again sounded in my war-trained ear, the bayonets gleamed, the sabres clashed, and the Prussian helmets and the eagles of France stood face to face on the borders of the Rhine.... I remembered our own armies, my own war-stricken country and its dead, its widows and orphans, and it nerved me to action for which the physical strength had long ceased to exist, and on the borrowed force of love and memory, I strove with might and main.”
—Clara Barton (1821–1912)
“The true gardener then brushes over the ground with slow and gentle hand, to liberate a space for breath round some favourite; but he is not thinking about destruction except incidentally. It is only the amateur like myself who becomes obsessed and rejoices with a sadistic pleasure in weeds that are big and bad enough to pull, and at last, almost forgetting the flowers altogether, turns into a Reformer.”
—Freya Stark (1893–1993)