# Paris football team

The Paris football team (French: Équipe de Paris Île-de-France de football) is an association football scratch team mainly consisting of players from Paris, but also of players hailing from other regions and countries playing for Parisian clubs or in the Parisian League. This scratch team was initially selected by the Union des Sociétés Françaises de Sports Athlétiques (USFSA), then by the Ligue de Football Association (LFA), and finally by the French Football Federation (FFF).
The Paris football team plays one-off games against clubs, regional teams, or collectives of other confederations, and as such, no governing body in the sport officially recognizes the team.

## History
### The USFSA era

Even before football was recognized by the USFSA in January 1894, the Parisian clubs White Rovers and Standard AC, both of whom consisting mostly of English players, formed an agreement to face the English club Marylebone FC, which came to play in Paris during the Easter holidays of 1893; the English logically won 3–0. On the following day, White Rovers played the first international club game on French soil against Marylebone FC (4–1). A year later, this time under the umbrella of the USFSA, a Paris selection including players from White Rovers, Standard AC, and Club Français faced an agreement between the English clubs Marylebone and Belzice; the English won 2–1.
On 24 February 1895, the first representative team of Paris played a friendly match against the London-based Folkestone at the soggy pitch of the Seine Velodrome, which welcomed 1,500 spectators, a record attendance for a football match in France at the time; the English won 3–0. The only French players who started for the Paris team were the founders of Club Français, Eugène Fraysse and Charles Bernat. Two months later, on 12 April, Paris faced Folkestone again, this time losing 8–0.
On 12 December 1898, a German national selection competed in a football match for the first time, beating the White Rovers 7–0, and on the next day, 13 December, the Germans faced a selection of the best Parisian players from the USFSA, which included five players from Club Français (defenders Sid Wood and Bernat and forwards Fraysse, Grandjean and Jack Wood), four players from Standard AC (goalkeeper Arnull, midfielder J. Hicks, and forwards O. Hicks and Meggs), one from Paris Star (defender Barnold), and one from Racing (midfielder Alfred Tunmer). Two hundred people attended this match, and after a fierce fight, the German team triumphed 2–1, scoring 1 goal in each half, while Paris' goal was scored by Meggs.

### The LFA era (1910–1919)

The Ligue de Football Association (LFA), a member of the French Interfederal Committee (CFI), set up a Paris selection in 1910, obtaining disappointing results, because the best Parisian players were now divided into four competing federations (USFSA, LFA, FGSPF, and FCAF), and the LFA could only select its own players, which mainly come from LFA's three flagship clubs: Red Star, CA Paris, and FEC Levallois.
Between 1910 and 1914, LFA's Paris selection played one match against a London League XI every year, losing each time. In the 1912 match, Paris fielded the likes of Pierre Chayriguès, Eugène Maës, Gaston Barreau, Henri Vialmonteil, and René Fenouillière. On 4 January 1914, the LFA's Paris selection traveled to Lille to face the USFSA's Northern France football team, also known as Lions des Flandres, and even though the LFA team fielded several former and current internationals, such as Chayriguès, Maës, Lucien Gamblin, Félix Romano, and captain Barreau, it was the USFSA team that won 3–0. This match was held two months after All Saints' Day of 1913, in which both federations organized a match at the same time, with the LFA team facing the London League in Saint-Ouen, while the USFSA selection faced the amateurs' team of English Wanderers in Auteuil, and this choice proves the acuteness of the rivalry between the federations. In the build-up for a match against Belgium on 25 January 1914, France played a warm-up game against a selection of the foreigner players in Paris, which included both 7 "Liguists" (LFA) and 4 "Unionists" (USFSA), being made-up of 6 Swiss, 3 British, 1 Hungarian, and a Franco-Italian; it ended in a goalless draw.
During the First World War, Northern France was occupied for 4 years and several "Lions" players died in battle, thus weakening the team, but despite this, the LFA's Paris selection was still unable to defeat them when they faced each other again on 11 May 1919, this time at the Stade de Paris in Saint-Ouen, ending in a 4–4 draw.

### Under the FFF

On 7 July 1919, the LFA merged with other national federations to form the French Football Federation (FFF), and the regional team began this new era with a victory against its London counterpart on 1 November 1919 (4–3), at the Stade Bergeyre in Paris. The next day, a rematch was played at the Stade de Paris, and the Parisians confirmed their success by winning 3–1.