Athletico Sports Club ( ar, نادي اتلتيكو الرياضي), known as Athletico Beirut or simply Athletico, is a
football
Football is a family of team sports that involve, to varying degrees, kicking a ball to score a goal. Unqualified, the word ''football'' normally means the form of football that is the most popular where the word is used. Sports commonly c ...
academy based in
Dbayeh, Lebanon.
History
Founded in 2006, the academy has eight branches across the country. Since 2011, Athletico has been partnered with French club
Olympique Lyonnais
Olympique Lyonnais (), commonly referred to as simply Lyon () or OL, is a men and women's French professional football club based in Lyon in Auvergne-Rhône-Alpes. The men play in France's highest football division, Ligue 1. Founded in 1950, th ...
.
In particular, Lyon provide the academy with training expertise and facilities.
Athletico graduate
Philippe Paoli
Philippe Robert Paoli (; born 3 January 1995) is a Lebanese former professional footballer who played as a forward.
After playing one season with Racing Beirut, Paoli moved to Lyon B in 2013. He then moved to Germany the following year, where ...
moved to Lyon's
B team
B, or b, is the second letter of the Latin-script alphabet, used in the modern English alphabet, the alphabets of other western European languages and others worldwide. Its name in English is ''bee'' (pronounced ), plural ''bees''. It re ...
in 2013. In 2019, Athletico became the first football academy in the
Middle East to receive the "One-Star" label from the
Asian Football Confederation (AFC). In 2021, the AFC approved Athletico as an elite one-star academy after meeting the 20 criteria in the AFC's Elite Youth Scheme.
The women's team was founded in 2010 as one of the first in Lebanon. They were
league runners up in the
2009–10 season,
and
cup
A cup is an open-top used to hold hot or cold liquids for pouring or drinking; while mainly used for drinking, it also can be used to store solids for pouring (e.g., sugar, flour, grains, salt). Cups may be made of glass, metal, china, c ...
finalists in
2010–11
1 (one, unit, unity) is a number representing a single or the only entity. 1 is also a numerical digit and represents a single unit of counting or measurement. For example, a line segment of ''unit length'' is a line segment of length 1. I ...
. They withdrew their team prior to the
2012–13 season.
The men's senior team won the
Lebanese Fourth Division Beirut in 2021–22, and were promoted to the
Third Division
In sport, the Third Division, also called Division 3, Division Three, or Division III, is often the third-highest division of a league, and will often have promotion and relegation with divisions above and below.
Association football
*Belgian Thir ...
.
Honours
Men
*
Lebanese Fourth Division Beirut
** Champions (1): 2021–22
Women
*
Lebanese Women's FA Cup
The Lebanon Women's Cup ( ar, كأس لبنان للسيدات, links=no), commonly known as the Lebanese Women's FA Cup, is the top cup competition for women's football clubs in Lebanon – designed as an equivalent to the Lebanese FA Cup. The ...
** ''Runners-up (1):''
2010–11
1 (one, unit, unity) is a number representing a single or the only entity. 1 is also a numerical digit and represents a single unit of counting or measurement. For example, a line segment of ''unit length'' is a line segment of length 1. I ...
See also
*
Lebanese Women's Football League
*
Women's football in Lebanon
*
List of women's association football clubs in Lebanon
References
External links
Athletico SCat Kooora
Sports organisations of Lebanon
Youth sport in Lebanon
2006 establishments in Lebanon
Defunct football clubs in Lebanon
Women's football clubs in Lebanon
Association football clubs established in 2010
Association football clubs disestablished in 2013
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