The Coupe Gambardella is a French football cup competition held between the under-18s of the French football clubs, organized by the

French Football Federation The French Football Federation ( FFF; french: Fédération Française de Football) is the governing body of football in France. It also includes the overseas departments ( Guadeloupe, French Guiana, Martinique, Mayotte and Réunion), the o ...

(FFF). The cup is regarded as an opportunity for young hopefuls to showcase their skills in a national competition. A victory in the finals of the cup is as highly sought by players trying to start their career, as by clubs wishing to demonstrate their ability to train young talents. (French) The current champion is

Olympique Lyonnais Olympique Lyonnais (), commonly referred to as simply Lyon () or OL, is a men and women's French professional football club based in Lyon in Auvergne-Rhône-Alpes. The men play in France's highest football division, Ligue 1. Founded in 1950, th ...

having defeated

Caen Caen (, ; nrf, Kaem) is a commune in northwestern France. It is the prefecture of the department of Calvados. The city proper has 105,512 inhabitants (), while its functional urban area has 470,000,COVID-19 pandemic in France The COVID-19 pandemic in France has resulted in confirmed cases of COVID-19 and deaths. The virus was confirmed to have reached France on 24 January 2020, when the first COVID-19 case in both Europe and France was identified in Bordeaux. Th ...

History

The tournament is the modern day version of the Coupe nationale des juniors, which ran up until 1954. The competition was then renamed, in 1955, to honour Emmanuel Gambardella, president of the French Football Federation from 1949 to 1953, who died on 30 August 1953.

Format

The Coupe Gambardella begins in December, of the previous year of the final, at the regional level. Home advantage is given out randomly, until the semi-final stage when games are played at neutral venues. Games which are drawn after ninety minutes, go to a

penalty shootout The penalty shootout is a method of determining a winner in sports matches that would have otherwise been drawn or tied. The rules for penalty shootouts vary between sports and even different competitions; however, the usual form is similar to pe ...

as opposed to

extra time Overtime or extra time is an additional period of play specified under the rules of a sport to bring a game to a decision and avoid declaring the match a tie or draw where the scores are the same. In some sports, this extra period is played only ...

and then a shootout. The final is always played on the same day as the

Coupe de France The Coupe de France, formerly known as the Coupe Charles Simon, is the premier knockout cup competition in French football organized by the French Football Federation (FFF). It was first held in 1917 and is open to all amateur and profession ...

and have traditionally taken place at the

Stade de France The Stade de France (, ) is the national stadium of France, located just north of Paris in the commune of Saint-Denis. Its seating capacity of 80,698 makes it the sixth-largest stadium in Europe. The stadium is used by the France national foo ...

List of finals

Results by team

Teams shown in ''italics'' are no longer in existence.

References

{{Football in France Coupe Gambardella Football cup competitions in France Youth football in France Youth football competitions