With ten league titles already under its belt, the Association Sportive Saint-Étienne Loire (ASSE for short) has long been the most successful club in French professional football (as of January 2015). The team from Saint-Étienne, an industrial town situated in the Massif Central, won most of these titles during the 1960s and 1970s. After a few highs and lows, the club has played in the top-flight Ligue 1 every year since 2004. The successes of the women’s team are also worthy of note: they play in the women’s 1st division and won the cup in 2011.
In order to ensure that coaching sessions could also be held on the best possible surface throughout the winter, the training ground behind its home stadium, Stade Geoffroy-Guichard, was fitted out with the LigaTurf RS+ CoolPlus synthetic turf system from Polytan in 2014.