Sport
The local football team is FC Nantes, members of the Championnat de France de Ligue 2 for the 2011-12 season. Since its creation in 1943, the club has gained reputation for its offensive style of play, locally named "jeu a la nantaise", and captured 8 Championnat titles and 3 Coupes de France.
Former players include Didier Deschamps, Marcel Desailly, Christian Karembeu and Fabien Barthez who were members of the France team that won the 1998 World Cup. Other notable players are Maxime Bossis, Philippe Gondet, Henri Michel, Claude Makélélé and Mickaël Landreau.
FC Nantes holds several records in the history of French professional football, including most consecutive seasons in the elite (44), most wins in a season (26), season invincibility (32 games) and all-time home invincibility (92 games, nearly 5 years). No French player has ever scored more goals than Philippe Gondet in a single season (36 in 1965-1966).
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Famous quotes containing the word sport:
“Americans living in Latin American countries are often more snobbish than the Latins themselves. The typical American has quite a bit of money by Latin American standards, and he rarely sees a countryman who doesn’t. An American businessman who would think nothing of being seen in a sport shirt on the streets of his home town will be shocked and offended at a suggestion that he appear in Rio de Janeiro, for instance, in anything but a coat and tie.”
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“If a walker is indeed an individualist there is nowhere he can’t go at dawn and not many places he can’t go at noon. But just as it demeans life to live alongside a great river you can no longer swim in or drink from, to be crowded into safer areas and hours takes much of the gloss off walking—one sport you shouldn’t have to reserve a time and a court for.”
—Edward Hoagland (b. 1932)
“The sport of digging the bait is nearly equal to that of catching the fish, when one’s appetite is not too keen.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)