The French football league system is a series of interconnected leagues for club football in France. At the top two levels of the system is the Ligue de Football Professionnel, which consists of two professional national divisions, Ligue 1 and Ligue 2. Below that are a number of leagues run by the Fédération Française de Football. At level 3 is the semi-professional Championnat National. Below that is the amateur Championnat de France amateur (level 4), which is divided into four parallel regional divisions, followed by the Championnat de France amateur 2 (level 5), which is divided into eight parallel regional divisions. Underneath that are many more regional leagues and divisions. Clubs finishing the season at or near the top of their division may be eligible for promotion to a higher division. Similarly, clubs finishing at or near the bottom of their division may be relegated to a lower division.
Famous quotes containing the words french, football, league and/or system:
“To nourish children and raise them against odds is in any time, any place, more valuable than to fix bolts in cars or design nuclear weapons.”
—Marilyn French (20th century)
“In this dream that dogs me I am part
Of a silent crowd walking under a wall,
Leaving a football match, perhaps, or a pit,
All moving the same way.”
—Philip Larkin (1922–1986)
“Stereotypes fall in the face of humanity. You toodle along, thinking that all gay men wear leather after dark and should never, ever be permitted around a Little League field. And then one day your best friend from college, the one your kids adore, comes out to you.”
—Anna Quindlen (b. 1952)
“Short of a wholesale reform of college athletics—a complete breakdown of the whole system that is now focused on money and power—the women’s programs are just as doomed as the men’s are to move further and further away from the academic mission of their colleges.... We have to decide if that’s the kind of success for women’s sports that we want.”
—Christine H. B. Grant, U.S. university athletic director. As quoted in the Chronicle of Higher Education, p. A42 (May 12, 1993)