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:
“‘Are ye right there, Michael? are ye right?
Do you think that we’ll be there before the night?
Ye’ve been so long in startin’,
That ye couldn’t say for sartin’—
Still ye might now, Michael, so ye might!’”
—William Percy French (1854–1920)
“You can’t be a Real Country unless you have A BEER and an airline—it helps if you have some kind of a football team, or some nuclear weapons, but at the very least you need a BEER.”
—Frank Zappa (1940–1993)
“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)
“We recognize caste in dogs because we rank ourselves by the familiar dog system, a ladderlike social arrangement wherein one individual outranks all others, the next outranks all but the first, and so on down the hierarchy. But the cat system is more like a wheel, with a high-ranking cat at the hub and the others arranged around the rim, all reluctantly acknowledging the superiority of the despot but not necessarily measuring themselves against one another.”
—Elizabeth Marshall Thomas. “Strong and Sensitive Cats,” Atlantic Monthly (July 1994)