Ligue 1 side Toulouse will travel into central France to take on Stade Olympique Romorantinais on Saturday evening. SO Romorantin sit tenth in their fourth-tier CFA group after a six year stay in the Championnat National before dropping down in 2008. Having made it out of regional football in 1991 they have shuttled around France’s lower divisions since spending time in the third, fourth and fifth tiers of the French lower reaches. SOR have a relatively solid cup pedigree in recent years, reaching the round of 16 on three occasions in the last decade, and they have taken a couple of Ligue 1 scalps along the way; in 2007 they beat Rennes 3-1 away from home and repeated the feat in defeating AS Nancy in 2009 at the same stage of the competition. Impressive accomplishments for the club from the Loir-et-Cher department of the centre region of France. This season, SOR eliminated seventh tier Chamalieres FC 5-0 at home before travelling north to take on USL Dunkerque and triumphing a goal to zero.
Toulouse meanwhile have seemingly turned a slight corner in the league, sitting eleventh in the table. Cup pedigree is not something TFC have in spades; they did win the competition in 1957 but recently all they have to point to are two semi-finals (1985 and 2009). That 2009 semi-final defeat is all the more galling as they were defeated by second division Guingamp. However, TFC can quite legitimately look towards the cup competition as a way to give their season a fillip. One could even go so far as saying that the club themselves could do with said tonic, as Toulouse have not set the world alight in recent years. Since finishing fourth in 2008-09, they have found themselves anchored in mid-table and seen prize assets continually sold off such as Andre-Pierre Gignac and Etienne Capoue. Toulouse were knocked out last season by PSG and so should be encouraged by the fact that the draw has been, in theory, kind to Alain Casanova’s men.
The game itself will be played at Romorantin’s home ground, the 6,200 capacity Stade Jules-Ladoumègue. Given the automatic switching of games so as the lower ranked team takes home avantage SOR will be taking inspiration from their exploits of 2007 and 2009.