It isn’t PSG who have won the most Ligue 1 titles. It’s not Marseille or Monaco either. The most Ligue 1 titles have actually been won by AS Saint Etienne who have collected ten, along with six Coupe de France’s, five Trophee des Champions and a Coupe de la Ligue. Saint Etienne won their first Coupe de France in 1962 with a 1-0 defeat of FC Nancy however this didn’t prevent them from being relegated to the second division, but they returned to the top flight after just one season there. Their former manager (and a former Saint Etienne player) Jean Snella returned to the club after a successful term in Switzerland and in his first season back, Saint Etienne secured the league title, the clubs second, won just one season after promotion. FC Nantes, who were promoted together with Saint Etienne, beat them to the title for the next two years which sparked the long rivalry between the two clubs. But Saint Etienne eventually had a third title and in Snellas final season in charge they had a fourth.

 

At this time, quality players Georges Bereta, Bernard Bosquier, Gerard Farison and Herve Revelli joined the club and Snella left to be replaced by the iconic Albert Batteux who joined from Stade Reims. In Batteux’s first season in charge, Saint Etienne captured the league and cup double. The following year, they won the league and the year after that, they won the double again! Saint Etienne had now established themselves as the best club in France and one of Europe’s top sides, which led to a huge level of expectations from the board and supporters. After failing to win the title for two seasons in a row, Batteux was let go despite being one of the most successful managers in the history of French football. The Carnus-Bosquier Affair also played a large role in his departure. These two players were being chased by Marseille and an epic media circus and public joust between Marseille president Marcel Leclerc and his counterpart at Saint Etienne Roger Rocher occurred in relation to their transfer. Rocher forced Batteux to sideline Carnus and Bosquier and the following season, the players became champions with Marseille which caused a disillusioned and unhappy Batteux to part company with Saint Etienne. He was replaced by a former ASSE player and now a young manager by the name of Robert Herbin in 1972.

 

At just 33, Herbin was the youngest manager in France and it was youth that guided his policies. Tapping into the clubs youth academy, he promoted Gerard Janvion, Dominique Bathenay, Jacques Santini and Dominique Rocheteau to the senior squad, and it paid off. Over the next two seasons, Saint Etienne won another league title and the league and cup double. In 1976, Saint Etienne achieved one of the greatest feats in French sport by reaching the final of the European Cup. Along the way, they dispatched the likes of Denmark’s best club FC Copenhagen, a formidable Glasgow Rangers side, and one of the greatest teams in the world at the time – Dynamo Kiev, who were basically the Soviet Union national team and were current Cup Winners Cup champions. Saint Etienne took on the might of Bayern Munich in the final, who possessed one of the greatest club sides in history. The game took place in Glasgow, where Saint Etienne were not overly popular having already eliminated the local side Rangers. The French side had the Germans backpedaling for much of the game but they failed to capitalise on several opportunities, hitting the posts a number of times which led to them being nicknamed “Les Poteaux Carres” (The Square Posts). In the end, a single Bayern Munich goal meant that Saint Etienne would go home empty handed, but becoming the first French club since Stade Reims in 1959 to reach a European Cup final and only the second to even get past the first round of the tournament since then, was a great achievement nonetheless. Despite the defeat, they returned to a heroes welcome in France and their consolation prize was another Ligue 1 title that year. 

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Achievements:
French Ligue 1 – Champions x8
French Ligue 2 – Champions x1
Coupe de France – Winners x6
Trophee des Champions – Winners x4
European Cup – Runners up x1

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Star player: Rene Domingo, dob 28 December 1928, pob Sourcieux-des-Mines, France
Clubs: Saint Etienne

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Although he had reached the twilight of his career by the time this Saint Etienne side just started to come to the fore, Rene Domingo, a French player of Spanish ancestry, remains the star of the team for the simple fact that by the time he retired in 1964 he had accumulated 544 appearances for the club, which is a record, having spent the entirety of his career with Saint Etienne. He wore the green from 1949 to 1964 and was captain for 424 games. And it was at the twilight of his career that he achieved his greatest memory with the club – receiving the 1962 Coupe de France from General Charles de Galle. Domingo would have carried on playing for the club if it wasn;t for a double leg fracture that ended his career. By then, he had won two French championships, the division two championships and the Coupe de France. Domingo died in 2013. He was 84.