How cruel fate denied Robert Jonquet a place among the all-time greats.
The history of football in latter years of the 1950s and the early ones of the following decade is dominated by Real Madrid in European club football and the Seleção Brasileira on the international stage. It propelled the names of players such as Alfredo Di Stéfano, Francisco Gento, Ferenc Puskás, Pelé and Garrincha into legendary status. Had things been slightly different however, and but for a bad break or a kinder turn of fortune, some of those names may well have been supplanted by that of Robert Jonquet. Continue reading →
Raymond Kopa – France’s ‘Little Napoleon’, who conquered Europe with Real Madrid.
The player who would ascend to legendary status as one of the outstanding footballers of the late fifties, accumulating three European Cup winner’s medals, multiple league titles in both France and Spain, numerous continental trophies and a Ballon d’Or award in 1958 – as well as being runner-up in 1959 and placed third in both 1956 and 1957 – was born on 13 October 1931, and christened as Raymond Kopaszewski. His grandparents had lived in the Polish city of Kraków, near the Czechoslovakian border before emigrating to Germany, where his parents were born. Following the first World War, the family then moved to France. In the Autumn of 1931, therefore.,the young Raymond became the third generation of the family, each to have been born in different countries. Continue reading →
The Lament of Stade de Reims – So nearly the first champions of Europe.
When Olympique de Marseille defeated AC Milan in 1993 – regardless of how tainted that victory may, or may not, have been – it ended decades of enforced patience for French football. It had taken almost 40 years for a French club to win the European Cup. Had fortunes taken a slightly different course in 1956 however, the history of European football’s premier club competition could have been so very different. Instead of Los Blancos of Real Madrid becoming the dominant force of continental football, their place in history may well have been taken by Les Rouge et Blanc of Stade de Reims. A club finishing in a mid-table position in Ligue 1 at the end of the 2018-19 season, newly returned to the top tier of French domestic football after a period of relative inconsequence, drifting around the lower leagues, could have been the swaggering aristocrats of the nascent European competition, rather than one of the sans-culottes lamenting over what might have been. Continue reading →
Gary Thacker 