Geography of French Football Teams

I recently completed a map of all the teams in the top five leages in the French Football pyramid. It took quite a bit of time, as though there are only about 20 or fewer teams in each of the top three leagues, the fourth and fifth divisions have about 64 and 160 teams, respectively. Searching for each team, finding their logo, and adding it to the map took some time, but I’m proud of the resulting map.

The map reveals some interesting trivia. Things like, the Southwest of France which is now missing a Ligue 1 team since Bordeaux, the ninth most populous city in France, was relegated to Ligue 2. Looking at the map with all the teams on it, the entirety of France is quite full, except for the Empty Diagonal, which is quite noticeable in its lack of teams.

I find it interesting to see which little towns have a team in the fifth division, or which cities don’t have any teams at all, such as Aix-en-Provence. As I created the map for the teams in the Championnat National 3, the fifth division of French football, I came across teams whose logos were difficult to find, and often had little information online, Facebook being sometimes their official channel of communication.

Some day perhaps I will create a simple tool which allows me to input a location and calculate the nearest team. Even better, I could give multiple options, and give more weight to teams in better leagues. I would be interested in encouraging support for more local teams in the lower levels of French football by allowing people to search for teams close to them.