France Ligue 2 Bitcoin Sports Betting
France’s Ligue 2 is the second division league for French Football. Founded in 1933, a year right after Ligue 1, the league has been producing top-notch teams and players that eventually move over to Ligue 1. Fans of the league are now able to place wagers using their Bitcoin on teams like AC Ajaccio, Auxerre, Brest, Lens, Lorient, Nancy, Niort, and Reims just to name a few. Below are the upcoming betting odds for France Ligue 2.
Best Bitcoin France Ligue 2 Betting Websites:
Sportsbet.io Crypto Sport Betting
- x3 Welcome Bonus!
- 24/7 Live Chat
Con´s:
- Not US Friendly
Onehash Bitcoin Sportsbook
-100% Deposit Match Bonus
- US Friendly!
Con´s:
- Pretty new site
CloudBet Bitcoin Casino and Sportsbook
- 100% Cash Bonus
- Great Odds
- Established Sportsbook
Con´s:
- Not US Friendly
[get_bit_html id=’31’ name=’France Ligue 2 Sportsbook Odds’ date=’648000′ hide_empty=’1′ event=’France Ligue 2′ hide_match_empty=’1′]
Ligue 2, short L2 or D2, is the second highest league in French football. It has existed as a professional league since the 1933/34 season, was an “open league” from 1970 to 1993, in which amateur teams were also allowed to take part, and was called Division 2 until 2002. Since 2016, Domino’s Pizza has been the name sponsor, the official name, although rarely used by the media and spectators, therefore Domino’s Ligue 2.
Up to and including the 2015/16 season, it was made up of teams from 157 clubs, including Racing Besançon (42 for at least forty years each, 41 seasons of which were uninterrupted since 1945/46), AS Cannes (41) and AS Béziers (40). The Le Havre AC also enters its 40th second league season in 2016/17.
Mode
Each club shall play a home match and an away match against any other team in the league. Here, too, the three-point rule applies; if there is a tie, the better goal difference is decisive; if the difference is the same, the larger number of goals scored is decisive. In earlier decades there were changing numbers of promotion and relegation places; partly there was also a combination of fixed relegation places (e.g. the first two) and elimination games (cash) between the next placed teams of the D2 against the third (and fourth) last of the D1. From 1997 to 2016, the three best clubs of a season were promoted to Ligue 1, the three worst to National (D3). For the first time since the end of the 2016/17 season, there are again only two direct promotion places, while the D2 third must play against the D1 third last two barrages. The same applies to relegation and promotion between the second and third leagues.
The main match day is Friday evening; a supposedly attractive match will only be played on Monday evening in accordance with the wishes of the pay-TV stations. In the national cup, the second league clubs must intervene in the 7th round, i.e. before the start of the actual main competition (“Compétition propre”).
At the end of 2014/15, the ES Troyes AC, who have led the league throughout the 18th matchday, returned to the top of the league, accompanied by surprise runners-up Gazélec FC Ajaccio, who made it through from third to the first division, where the Corsicans have never been represented. In third place, SCO Angers will return to Ligue 1 after 21 years. LB Châteauroux and AC Arles-Avignon were both beaten at the end of the standings. The immediate relegation of the US Orléans, on the other hand, was only decided on the last matchday in a duel with AC Ajaccio. Olympique Nîmes, who had been sentenced to relegation in the first instance due to game manipulation, must now “only” start the coming season with the burden of an eight-point deduction.
Mickaël Le Bihan (Le Havre AC) became top scorer in the second division with 18 goals ahead of Seydou Koné (Chamois Niort) and Jonathan Kodjia (Angers) with 15 goals each.
In the 2015/16 season, the first division relegates FC Metz, Racing Lens (both after only one year) and FC Évian Thonon Gaillard will be joining the Ligue 2 line-up. Red Star, one of France’s most traditional and often scandal-laden clubs, will return from the third division to Ligue 2, accompanied by Paris FC and FC Bourg-Péronnas.
The league started playing on 31 July 2015, when it was not yet clear whether there would be three promotions to the first division at the end of the season (last matchday: probably 13 May 2016), as previously, or only two, as the professional league association LFP had wished. While LFP Chairman Frédéric Thiriez justifies his move with increased financial and planning security for shareholders and stadium investors, the second league clubs, supported by FFF President Noël Le Graët in their rejection, see such a measure as “in favour of the elite and at the expense of the ar…holes” (according to Claude Michy, President of Clermont Foot).
Only three of the twenty teams have never been in the first league: the rising Bourg-Péronnas, US Créteil and Clermont Foot. In 2014/15, the latter was the first French professional club to have Corinne Diacre, a woman at the helm, who, after finishing twelfth, entered her second division season in the same way as referee Stéphanie Frappart.
In their season forecast, the France Football magazine this time decided that Paris FC, AS Nancy and AJ Auxerre would be promoted and Bourg-Péronnas, Ajaccio and Nîmes relegated to third place.
Foreign players
France is also a magnet for foreign footballers in the second league. In the 2010/11 season, more than a third of the 20 clubs had no French nationality; however, those from EEA countries, territories associated with the EU and French overseas territories or regions are not subject to the restrictions on foreigners imposed by the relevant association.
The lion’s share of the 158 “football migrants” came from northwestern (87 players) and central and eastern (32) Africa; Algeria (16), Senegal (15), Cameroon (12), Mali (11), Morocco and Ivory Coast (10 each) were the largest groups. A total of 24 players came from other European countries (including five Serbs and three Croats, three Portuguese and three Belgians). Ten Americans (including six Brazilians) and five Asians completed the line-up.
History
The Ligue 2 has changed its face more often than the highest division. There are several reasons for this: until at least the 1980s, football was not so strongly rooted in spectator favour and media interest in France that there would have been a sound financial basis for much more than two dozen clubs, especially since the fact that France is large and not as densely populated as Germany leads to increased driving distances and travel costs and also enables fewer local derbies to watch.
The widespread discrepancy between relatively high costs and low revenues meant that the D2 was not organised as a single track for long periods of time, but as a multi-track system:
- two groups (North and South) 1933/34, 1945/46, 1972-1993
- three groups (North, Central and South) 1970-1972
- four groups (North, East, South and West) 1937/38 with a subsequent “master round” (phase finale) of the four best placed teams each
From 1970 to 1992, Division 2 was an “open” league, in which both amateur and professional clubs could compete; before 1970 and again from 1992, it was a purely professional league.
In the 1948/49 season, after the AS Angoulême withdrew for a short time, the 1st FC Saarbrücken played as FC Sarrebruck in the D2 – very successful, but only out of competition: therefore the official final table of this season shows only 19 participants (with Racing Lens and Girondins-AS du Port Bordeaux in first and second place). If the 38 matches of the Saarland team had been evaluated, the two promoted players would have been Sarrebruck and Bordeaux. (To the political-historical backgrounds of this intermezzo see here.)
The founding associations 1933
Like the clubs of the top division, which started one year earlier, the 23 founding clubs of Division 2 – as far as they still exist – are rightly among the pioneers of professional football in France. These were in the northern group Amiens AC, RC Calais, Le Havre AC, FC Metz*, FC Mulhouse*, RC Roubaix, FC Rouen, US Saint-Servan-Saint-Malo, Racing Strasbourg, US Tourcoing, US Valenciennes as well as from Paris Red Star Olympique* and Club Français*. In the southern group, Olympique Alès*, SO Béziers, FC Hyères*, FC Lyon, AS Monaco, AS Saint-Étienne and, from Bordeaux, Club Deportivo Español and SC de la Bastidienne played; these two merged to form FC Hispano-Bastidienne Bordeaux at the end of the first season. US Suisse from Paris and FC Arménienne from Lyon were also admitted in 1933/34, while US Suisse withdrew before the start of the season.
The six clubs marked with an asterisk (*) were among the founding members of Division 1 in the previous year, from which they had been relegated.
Champions, promoted and relegated clubs
The Le Havre AC and AS Nancy second division champions won the most (five each), followed by Racing Lens, OGC Nice, Lille OSC (four each) and SO/HSC Montpellier, OU/Olympique Lyon, FC Toulouse, AS Saint-Étienne, FC Metz and Racing Strasbourg (three each). Only three of the twenty teams have never been in the first league: the rising Bourg-Péronnas, US Créteil and Clermont Foot. In 2014/15, the latter was the first French professional club to have Corinne Diacre, a woman at the helm, who, after finishing twelfth, entered her second division season in the same way as referee Stéphanie Frappart. In their season forecast, the France Football magazine this time decided that Paris FC, AS Nancy and AJ Auxerre would be promoted and Bourg-Péronnas, Ajaccio and Nîmes relegated to third place.