AS Saint-Étienne

Association Sportive de Saint-Étienne Loire (French pronunciation: /asɔsjɑsjɔ̃ spɔʁtiv də sɛ̃t‿etjɛn lwaʁ/), popularly known as AS Saint-Étienne, or simply ASSE (French pronunciation: /a.ɛs.ɛs.ø/), is a French football club from the city of Saint-Étienne in the region of Auvergne-Rhône-Alpes, founded in 1919. The team plays its home matches at Stade Geoffroy-Guichard, located within the city. It plays in Ligue 2, the second tier of national football.

Together with Olympique Marseille, F.C. Nantes, A.S. Monaco and Paris Saint-Germain, Saint-Étienne is one of the most successful clubs in the history of French football, having won ten Ligue 1 titles, making it the second most successful team in the league competition, six Coupe de France titles, five Trophées des Champions and one Coupe de la Ligue (its most recent trophy, in the 2012–13 season). Les Verts, as they are informally known, are the team with the second most league championships in France, while their six cup titles place them as the third club with the most Coupes de France. The club won most of its titles in the 1960s and 1970s, including the European Cup runners-up place it achieved in 1976, when the club was led by the managers Jean Snella, Albert Batteux and Robert Herbin. Saint-Étienne's main rival is Olympique Lyonnais, based in the nearby city of Lyon, with whom it annually contests the Derby du Rhône. In 2009 the club had added a women's football section.

ASSE has qualified for 10 editions of the European Cup – Champions League, where it reached the final of the 1975–76 season but lost 1–0 to Bayern Munich; a season earlier it had been eliminated by the same opponent in the semifinals. It has also appeared in 8 editions of the UEFA Europa League, where it reached the quarterfinals a couple of times, and, in addition, "Sainté" has played 2 editions of the defunct European Cup Winners' Cup but only managed to reach the Second Round.

The club has had several notable players, especially during its golden age in the 1960s and 1970s, who were stars at national and international level. Some of the players and managers who marked an era at Saint-Étienne were Aimé Jacquet, Jacques Santini, Laurent Blanc and Michel Platini. Jacquet managed the French national team at the 1998 World Cup, where it was proclaimed world champion, while Santini won the 2003 FIFA Confederations Cup. Blanc was the national team manager for two years between 2010 and 2012.