Lille OSC

Also written as Lille.

The club

Lille Olympique Sporting Club were founded on 23 September 1944 through the merger of two pre-war clubs from the city, Olympique Lillois and SC Fives. The red and white come from Olympique Lillois, while the blue shorts are a reference to SC Fives, and the club crest has carried a mastiff since 1981. Since 17 August 2012 the club has played at the Stade Pierre-Mauroy in Villeneuve-d'Ascq, a 50,186-seat ground with a retractable roof, the fourth-largest stadium in France; the record attendance of 49,712 was set at the 5-1 win over Paris Saint-Germain on 14 April 2019. The president is Olivier Létang and the owner is Merlyn Partners.

The head coach is Davide Ancelotti, appointed on 1 June 2026. He follows Bruno Génésio, who was in charge for the 2024/25 and 2025/26 seasons, Paulo Fonseca, who led the club from 2022 to 2024, and Jocelyn Gourvennec, who took the 2021/22 campaign after the title-winning side broke up.

Recent seasons

Lille finished tenth in 2021/22 with 55 points, defending the title poorly under Jocelyn Gourvennec with 48 goals scored and 48 conceded, though Jonathan David still managed 15 league goals. Under Paulo Fonseca they climbed to fifth in 2022/23 with 67 points, David scoring 24 in the league, and fourth in 2023/24 with 59 points from 34 matches, David on 19. Bruno Génésio's first season, 2024/25, brought fifth place on 60 points, with David reaching 16 league goals and 25 in all competitions before leaving. In 2025/26, with David gone and Lucas Chevalier sold to Paris Saint-Germain for 40 million euros, Génésio took Lille to third on 61 points from 34 matches, 18 wins, 7 draws and 9 defeats, 52 scored and 37 conceded; Matías Fernández-Pardo and Hákon Haraldsson shared the league scoring lead on 8, and Olivier Giroud, signed from Los Angeles FC, led the club with 11 in all competitions.

Honours and landmarks

French champions four times, in 1945/46, 1953/54, 2010/11 and 2020/21, and Coupe de France winners six times, in 1946, 1947, 1948, 1953, 1955 and 2011. The 1945/46 side did the double, beating Red Star in the 1946 Coupe de France final, and the 1953/54 title came on the back of a defence that conceded only 22 goals in 34 games. The second double arrived in 2010/11, when the team of Yohan Cabaye, Mathieu Debuchy and Eden Hazard won the league and beat Paris Saint-Germain in the Coupe de France final. The 2020/21 title under Christophe Galtier was sealed with a 2-1 win at Angers on 23 May 2021; the final points total and the margin over Paris Saint-Germain were not established from the sources read here. Lille also won the Trophée des Champions in 2021, 1-0, and the UEFA Intertoto Cup in 2004, having been runners-up in 2002. The club won the second division in 1956/57, going up by beating Rennes, and again in 1999/2000, when they took the title by sixteen points and returned to the top flight, where they have stayed since.

Notable scorelines

The 5-1 home win over Paris Saint-Germain on 14 April 2019 stands out, played in front of the club's record crowd of 49,712 at the Stade Pierre-Mauroy. In Europe, Lille won 3-0 away to AC Milan in the 2020/21 Europa League group stage with a Yusuf Yazıcı hat-trick, and beat Feyenoord 6-1 at home on 29 January 2025 to close the Champions League league phase. The heaviest defeats of recent European campaigns, and the club's all-time record win and record defeat in domestic football, were not established from the sources read here.

European record

Lille's Champions League history includes some famous scalps: a 1-0 win over Manchester United in 2005, a 2-0 win over AC Milan at the San Siro in 2006, and a 1-0 home win over Liverpool in 2010. In 2021/22 they qualified from their group as French champions before going out of the round of sixteen to Chelsea; the leg scores were not established from the sources read here. In 2023/24 they reached the quarter-finals of the Conference League, losing only one of twelve matches in the competition; the quarter-final opponent was not established from the sources read here.

The 2024/25 Champions League was the club's best recent campaign. In the league phase Lille lost 2-0 at Sporting CP on 17 September, beat holders Real Madrid 1-0 at home on 2 October through a Jonathan David penalty in first-half stoppage time, ending Real Madrid's fourteen-match unbeaten run in the competition, won 3-1 at Atlético Madrid on 23 October, drew 1-1 at home to Juventus on 5 November, won 2-1 at Bologna on 27 November, beat Sturm Graz 3-2 at home on 11 December, lost 2-1 at Liverpool on 21 January and thrashed Feyenoord 6-1 at home on 29 January, finishing seventh of 36 on 16 points and going straight to the round of sixteen. There Borussia Dortmund put them out 3-2 on aggregate: 1-1 in Dortmund on 4 March, Hákon Haraldsson equalising on 68 minutes, then a 2-1 defeat at home on 12 March after Jonathan David had scored inside five minutes, Emre Can levelling from the spot and Maximilian Beier winning it on 65.

In 2025/26 Lille played the Europa League and reached the round of sixteen, winning five and losing seven of twelve matches in the competition.

Quotes

After the 1-0 win over Real Madrid on 2 October 2024, Bruno Génésio said: "What this team did is incredible. We try to put things in place but you need the players to believe in the plan for this kind of upset to happen. You have to do everything perfectly, you need a keeper who makes the decisive saves, a striker who scores and a bit of luck." He added: "We played a very good first half, we played together, it's a great night for everyone." Carlo Ancelotti, then the Real Madrid coach, said: "It seemed like we were improving and today we took a step back."

Right now (2026/27)

Davide Ancelotti, appointed on 1 June 2026, is the head coach, taking over a side his father's Real Madrid lost to at the Stade Pierre-Mauroy two years earlier. The league start has been strong: a 2-0 win at Angers on 23 August 2026, a 2-2 home draw with Paris Saint-Germain on 28 August, and a 1-0 win at Toulouse on 3 September, leaving Lille third with 7 points from three matches; goalkeeper Berke Özer has kept a clean sheet in the early rounds.

As third-place finishers in 2025/26 Lille are in the Champions League league phase. The campaign opens at home to Real Betis on 8 September 2026, with Arsenal away on 13 October and Galatasaray at home on 21 October, and further fixtures against Bodø/Glimt, Bayern Munich, Stuttgart, Slovan Bratislava and Roma. The known summer departure is Ichem Ferrah, sold to Pisa on 7 August 2026 for an undisclosed fee; confirmed arrivals were not established from the sources read here.

Sources

Researched and written for not4quarters. Where a fact could not be established from the sources read, this page says so rather than guessing.