Smallest town in the first division of your country

[Giuseppe]

The questions are simple:
1) What's the smallest town/city that has a first division team in your country (currently)?
2) Also, if you happen to know (or you're able to find out), what is the smallest town ever to have a first fivision team in your country?

For Romania:
1) The smallest city this year is Petrosani with a population around 45.000 and the team in question is Jiul Petrosani.
2) Scornicesti has a population of 13.000 and has had a first division team between 1979 and 1989. The team was called FC Olt Scornicesti. The fact that such a small town had a first division team is understandable if you take into consideration that Nicolae Ceausescu was born there . It is also understandable why the team was shut down halfway through the 1989/1990 season .
There is one problem though - Mica Brad, a team that has played in the first division between 1939 and 1941. So what's the problem? Simple: Brad currently has a population of 17.000 (so its bigger than Scornicesti), but there is no way for me to know how big the town was back in 1940. My guess is that it was considerably smaller.

[Forza AZ]

RKC from Waalwijk

[Rox]

Blsany are now in Czech first division, it is a village with population I think less than 1000, they are now last and not only I very wish them to relegate.Drnovice were also in first division it is also a village, they are now in second division.Villages should not play first division I think

[Giuseppe]

Waalwijk has a population of 45.000, just to make it more clear.

Blsany has a population of 939 if I translated 'počet obyvatel' correctly (on their web-page).

[spoonman]

German Bundesliga, current smallest towns:
Kaiserslautern, population 98,500 (might get relegated)
Wolfsburg, population 121,700

Cottbus, population 104,400, will probably earn promotion to the Bundesliga.

Smallest town ever:
Unterhaching, population 21,500 (Bundesliga member 1999/2000 and 2000/01)

Burghausen (pop. 18,300) and Aue (pop. 18,500) are currently the smallest towns in 2nd Bundesliga, with Aue still having a mathematical chance of being promoted.

[Tower]

in Israel its sakhnin with a population of 23,000, but they have a lot of fans from other places because they are the only arab team in the first league.

Qiryat Shmona that is might go up this season has a population of 21,900.

[badgerboy]

In England it is Wigan - with a population of 89,876 according to Wikipedia.

The lowest ever I believe to be Glossop North End, with a current population of 28,500. Backed by money from the Hill Wood family, who would later turn their attentions to Arsenal, they enjoyed one season in the old first division way back in the 1899-1900 season. They were 17 seasons in all in the Football League (just two divisions at that time).

The club currently plays in North West Counties Division 1 (at level 5 of the non-league football pyramid). It's off topic but perhaps a good place to mention that one of their opponents next year will be FC United of Manchester - the club set up by disenchanted Manchester United fans at the time of the Glazer family takeover. They were North West Counties Division Two Champions this year. I heard a report on the radio this weekend that the crowd there to see them celebrate their promotion was over 6,000! Just checked Tony Kempster's excellent site and this is confirmed. Even if those crowd figures were buoyed by the lack of a match for Manchester United this weekend the average gate of over 3,000 at that level is impressive. Indeed none of their games - including away games - has had a crowd below 1,000 and this in a league where most gates are in two digits.

[FrancoisD]

In France, it depends how we count population. If strictly limited to administrative boundaries, Sochaux is the smallest, with 4,500, and probably the smallest ever. But (Sochaux-)Montbéliard agglomeration counts more than 120,000 people.

So it leaves us with Monaco, 31,000 as smallest population with a L1 team in 2005/2006.

And for all-time stats, I'd stay it's Guingamp, with 8,000.

[seso]

For Greece, Levadiakos FC is from Livadia, a city with population 21500. Kastoria FC has played in the first division and the city of Kastoria has a population of 16000.

[pineapple stu]

Ireland - Longford, with a population of 9000 or so. Monaghan United were in the Premier a few years back - population 6000. However, there's only 22 teams in the league in Ireland, and just two divisions, so you're very limited as to what teams can actually get into the Premier.

[Aliceag]

In Portugal Moreirense has recently been in Superliga for two years, and it is a small town with 5000 people. This year I guess it was to be Paços de Ferreira, from also a small town with 6000 people. NExt year, Paços should be kept also, and joining Desportivo das Aves, from Vila das Aves, a village with 8000 people. We do have a lot of small town teams in our first and second league. Mainly all teams that are not from Lisboa or Porto, come from towns with less than 50 000 people. Exceptions are Braga, Coimbra, Funchal, with a tittle more. But we must remember that Portugal is a small country with no tradition of large cities. Except for Lisboa and Porto areas, all cities have no more than 100 000 people.

[Lyonnais]

Population of the 20 cities in the French Ligue 1

(1999 census, including metro area as per INSEE definition)

11,175,000 Paris (city 2,125,000)
1,648,000 Lyon (city 445,000)
1,516,000 Marseille(city 798,000)
1,143,000 Lille (city 185,000)
965,000 Toulouse (city 390,000)
933,000 Nice (city 343,000)
925,000 Bordeaux (city 215,000)
711,000 Nantes (city 270,000)
612,000 Strasbourg (city 264,000)
553,000 Lens (Douai-Lens metro area; city: 36,000)
521,000 Rennes (city: 206,000)
430,000 Metz (city: 124,000)
411,000 Nancy (city: 104,000)
321,000 St Etienne (city: 180,000)
293,000 Le Mans (city: 146,000)
180,000 Sochaux (Montbeliard metro area; city: 4,000)
172,000 Troyes (city: 61,000)
85,000 Auxerre (city: 38,000)
77,000 Ajaccio (city: 53,000)
67,000 Monaco (Menton-Monaco metro area; city: est 30,000)

Promoted teams
400,000 Valenciennes (city 41,000)
32,000 Sedan (city: 21,000)
186,000 Lorient (city: 59,000) or Caen (metro 371,000; city: 114,000)

So, Sochaux is the smallest city is the French Ligue 1 with 4,500 inhabitants.
However, it is much more meaningful to deal with metro areas and in this case, the smallest one is Monaco (as per INSEE definition, which is a bit weird to me as I would have considered it as a part of the Nice metro area).
Anyway, next year, the smallest area will be for sure Sedan with 32,000 inhabitants in their metro area.

[ignjat63]

Banatski Dvor. It's stadium takes 3,500 spectators which is more than the village population. This has got to be some kind of Guiness book record.

[exile]

In Scotland, the smallest town in the Premier League at present is Motherwell (31,000).

Historically, Alloa, Bo'ness and Cowdenbeath, all with less than 20,000, have had a top division team.

However - Renton, population 2,000, had a team that won the Scottish Cup in 1888, then defeated West Bromwich the English Cup winners and were therefore "champions of the world"!

[pineapple stu]

Banatski Dvor. It's stadium takes 3,500 spectators which is more than the village population. This has got to be some kind of Guiness book record.

Gretna in the Scottish Division Two (just promoted out of it, actually, and will be in the UEFA Cup next year as they're in the Cup Final against Hearts, who are already in the CL) have a population of 3,000 and have plans to bulid a 6,000 capacity ground.