Racing Club de Strasbourg Alsace, commonly known as RC Strasbourg (Alemannic German: RC Stroßburg, German: RC Straßburg; RCS) or simply just Racing, is a French professional association football club founded in 1906 and based in the city of Strasbourg, Alsace. It became a professional club in 1933, and is currently playing in Ligue 1, the top tier of French football, having won the 2016–17 Ligue 2 championship.

This comes after the club was demoted to the fifth tier of French football at the conclusion of the 2010–11 Championnat National season after going into financial liquidation. Renamed RC Strasbourg Alsace, they won the CFA championship in 2012–13, and became Championnat National champions in 2015–16. Stade de la Meinau has been the club's stadium since 1914.

RC Strasbourg is one of twelve clubs to have won all three major French trophies: Division 1, now Ligue 1, in 1979; the Coupe de France in 1951, 1966 and 2001; and the Coupe de la Ligue in 1964, 1997, 2005 and 2019. It is also among the thirteen teams to have played more than 2,000 games in France's top flight (spanning 67 seasons) and has taken part in 52 European games since 1961. By contrast, it has also experienced relegation at least once a decade since the early 1950s. It has changed its manager 52 times in 75 years of professional play.

The destiny of the RC Strasbourg has always been wedded to the history of Alsace. Like the region, the club has changed nationality three times and has a troubled history. The club was founded when the city (and the region of Alsace-Lorraine) was part of the German Empire, and the club insisted on its Alsatian and popular roots from the beginning, in opposition to the first Strasbourg-based clubs which came from the German-born bourgeoisie. When Alsace was returned to France after the First World War, the club changed its name from 1. FC Neudorf to the current Racing Club de Strasbourg, in imitation of Pierre de Coubertin's Racing Club de France, a clear gesture of Francophilia. RC Strasbourg players lived through the Second World War as most Alsatians did: evacuated in 1939, annexed in 1940 and striving to avoid Nazification and incorporation in the Wehrmacht between 1942 and 1944. When Alsace was definitively returned to France after the war, Strasbourg's identity switched towards Jacobinism with, for example, emotional wins in the cup in 1951 and 1966 amidst Franco-Alsatian controversies.

History

Founded in 1906 as Fußballclub Neudorf, Racing Club de Strasbourg Alsace's history has been marked by constant periods of instability, firstly due to political issues (for the first forty years of its existence, the club played alternately in the French and German championships because of the dispute between the two countries over Alsace), and secondly due to corporate issues. In spite of this, the team was able to carve out a place for itself in the golden roll of the French league by winning a number of trophies, the most important of which was the championship in the 1978–79 season.