Without a single trophy since 1981, the new generation of French football fans may be forgiven for wondering why so much fuss is made about ASSE. But despite two and a half lean decades, Saint-Etienne remain France’s most successful club and lead the way with ten national championships and six Coupes de France.
In 1919, the small supermarket chain Casino – founded by Geoffroy Guichard – created its very own sporting club for its employees, with athletics, basketball and football departments, adopting the shops trademark green as its sporting colours. In 1933, Saint-Etienne was accepted into the professional football League, only after the city’s first choice team, the Sporting Club of Saint-Etienne, was unable to provide sufficient financial guarantees to the League.
In 1938, the club – already playing in the Stade Geoffroy-Guichard – earned promotion to the first division, but it wasn’t until 1955 and victory in the Coupe Charles Drago that Les Verts began their assault on France’s silverware in earnest - winning their first League crown two seasons later. 1962's Coupe de France triumph over Nancy then marked the beginning of two glorious decades. Saint-Etienne won the French League in 1964, ’67, ’68, ’69, ’70, ’74, ’75, ’76 and ’81, and also lost the 1976 European Cup Final to Bayern Munich.
However, the imprisonment of President Roger Rocher in 1982 for fraud in the “Caisse Noir” affair marked the beginning of the end for Les Verts. And just as Saint-Etienne looked to be shaking off their status as a fallen giant of the French game, a fake passport scandal further rocked the club in 2001.
With an average of over 35,000 fans packing into “the cauldron”, as their stadium is affectionately called, Saint-Etienne returned to Ligue 1 for the 2004-05 season, and thanks to their impressive sixth-place finish, graced European competition for the first time in 23 years via the Intertoto Cup .
