Toulouse

The present Toulouse FC was founded in 1970 as Union Sportive de Toulouse and adopted the Toulouse FC name and professional status in 1979; the club badge claims 1937, but that was a separate Toulouse FC which lost its professional licence in 1967 and was absorbed by Red Star in Paris, and historians treat the two as unconnected. Les Violets won the Coupe de France in 2023 and Ligue 2 three times, and first played in Europe in 1986 when they knocked out Maradona's Napoli. The club went bankrupt in 2001 and restarted in the third tier before climbing back to Ligue 1 by 2003.