Alexandre Villaplane

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Alexandre Villaplane

Alexandre Villaplane (born September 12, 1905 in Algiers , † December 26, 1944 in Arcueil ) was a French football player until the mid-1930s . During the Second World War he collaborated as the leader of a militia-like force with the German occupiers of the country, for which he was executed soon after the liberation .

Club career

Villaplane, usually known for short as "Alex", whom Le Monde described as "a world-class playmaker and one of the most talented players of his generation", began playing football at the Gallia Club d'Alger even before the First World War ; in addition, he was active in athletics and swimming. In 1921 he returned to the mother country with his parents from the French colonial area in North Africa . At the age of 16 he was already playing in the first team of FC Cette (renamed FC Sète in 1927 ). In France before the 1932/33 season there was no professional football and no nationwide, uniform league operation ; However, especially at this club under its lively President Georges Bayrou in the 1920s a "disguised professionalism" (amateurisme marron) developed , which led to the fact that the eleven with their English, Swedes, Swiss and Hungarians "looked like a European selection". As a result, the young French Algerian had a hard time securing a regular place, so in 1923 he switched to US Vergèze. Back at Cette in 1924, he had to do his military service until the end of 1925, initially in neighboring Montpellier and then in Joinville . That is why his name was missing in both finals of the French National Cup during his years there: Albert Jourda was in 1923 (2: 4 against Red Star ) and Marcel Domergue in 1924 (2: 3 after Olympique Marseille ) - both French national players - in the middle position preferred by Villaplane . The internationality of the Cetter squad also resulted in multiple protests from opposing teams regarding the eligibility of individual footballers to play, whereupon the Fédération Française de Football canceled matches - for example in the cup quarter-finals in 1923, when the club at the green table was initially excluded from the competition, but subsequently allowed again. although the semi-finals had already taken place, which resulted in several rescheduling. Something similar happened in 1926 (also in the round of the last eight teams), where Cette lost 4-2 and was eliminated after a 2-1 against Stade Français in the arranged replay.

Presumably from the summer of 1926, Alexandre Villaplane , who was meanwhile regularly used as the left runner in the club and national team (see below) , competed for SC Nîmes , but did not attract much attention in the cup. In 1929 he moved to the capital city Racing Club de France . With Racing he reached another final for the Coupe de France in 1930 , and this time he was on the pitch. The last success was denied to him again, because his long-time FC Sète won the cup 3-1 after extra time, although Villaplane's team with Émile Veinante , Edmond Delfour and Raoul Diagne were quite strong.

With the introduction of the professional Division 1 , he returned to the south of France. In the jersey of Olympique Antibes he was very close to winning the first championship title , because his new club ended the 1932/33 season as leaders of Group B and should actually play the final against Lille Olympique . However, due to the attempt to bribe group opponents SC Fives , Antibes was then downgraded, and AS Cannes took its place in the final. The following year, Villaplane played for league rivals OGC Nice ; although he got eight league goals personally, the OGC was only 13th out of 14 teams and then temporarily turned its back on professionalism. This had Villaplanes in 1934 another change, this time to the second division FC Hispano-Bastidienne Bordeaux , the consequence, which ended the season 1934/35 as a beaten table bottom. However, the player did not play a single point game - presumably due to the fact that he had been more often on the racetrack than on the training ground for a longer time . During this time, he was sentenced to prison for betting fraud.

Stations

  • Gallia Club d'Alger (until 1921, as a teenager)
  • Football Club de Cette (1921-1923)
  • Union Sportive de Vergèze (1923/24)
  • Football Club de Cette (1924-1926 or 1927)
  • Sporting Club de Nîmes (1926 or 1927–1929)
  • Racing Club de France (1929-1932)
  • Olympique d'Antibes (1932/33)
  • Olympique Gymnaste Club de Nice (1933/34)
  • Football Club Hispano-Bastidienne de Bordeaux (1934/35)

In the national team

Between April 1926 and July 1930, Villaplane, who had already been considered several times in the southern French selection, played 25 A-internationals for France . He did not succeed in this circle; on his 20th mission, however, he was the team captain for the first time. After he had played six international matches in a row within two months in 1926, he was disregarded for 20 months - this coincided with his move from Cette to Nîmes - which was followed by 13 games between February 1928 and May 1929, again in a row.

At the 1928 Olympic football tournament , Villaplane played in France's only encounter (3: 4 despite a temporary 2: 0 lead against Italy ). In 1930 he was one of the French footballers who took part in the finals of the first World Cup. In Uruguay he played all three Bleus games and was the team captain. This tournament was followed by a 26th international match (2: 3 against Brazil with Arthur Friedenreich ), which the French association does not count as official. "Alex" was also used against teams from German-speaking countries: three times (1926, 1928 and 1930) against Switzerland and 1926 against Austria ; in France's first international match against Germany (1-0 in March 1931), his international career was over.

Palmarès

  • French champion: Nothing
  • French cup winner: Nothing (but finalist 1923 [without final game], 1930)
  • 25 international A games (no hits) for France (6 during his time with Cette, 13 with Nîmes and 6 with Racing Paris), Olympic participant in 1928, World Cup participant in 1930
  • unknown number of games and 9 goals (including 1 for Antibes, 8 for Nice) in Division 1

Life after football career

The descent into a seedy milieu, which began towards the end of his career, was followed by an even darker chapter in Villaplane's biography with the beginning of World War II . From 1940 he led a brigade of North Africans who collaborated with the occupiers in the occupied part of France as well as in the "free" part of France , took action against French resistance fighters ( maquisards ) , enriched themselves personally in the process and earned a cruel reputation for them the designation " SS Mohamed" registered (named after Mohamed el-Maadi ; on the subject, see also Milice française ). The group became part of the Gestapo française (Carlingue) together with other units of the North African Legion (Légion nord-africaine ) ; Alexandre Villaplane received the rank of SS-Untersturmführer . On June 11, 1944, one day after the Oradour massacre , as part of a retaliatory action in Mussidan, he gave the order to shoot eleven young resisters who had been captured and also personally participated in their murder. After France was liberated, he was sentenced to death by shooting on December 1, 1944 , and the sentence was carried out on December 26, 1944 in the Fort de Montrouge in Arcueil .

In 2008, Alexandre Villaplane's criminal path also provided the template for an only slightly anonymized character in a historical detective novel by Martin Walker ( Bruno, chief of police ; published in German in 2009 by Diogenes ), in which a former footballer and Nazi sympathizer named Capitaine Villanova im February 1944 carries out brutal punitive actions against partisans in Périgueux . Already in 2004 he was mentioned as Carlingue leader Villaplana in the novel "Le corps noir" ("The Black Corps") by Dominique Manotti, which was set at the time of the Allied invasion of Normandy .

literature

  • Denis Chaumier: Les Bleus. Tous les joueurs de l'équipe de France de 1904 à nos jours. Larousse, o. O. 2004 ISBN 2-03-505420-6
  • Marcel Dreykopf: Football - the very last thing. Intrigue and stupidity from the world of football. Rowohlt, Reinbek 2011, ISBN 978-3-499-62679-1
  • Yves Dupont: La Mecque du football ou Mémoires d'un Dauphin. Self-published, Sète 1973
  • L'Équipe / Gérard Ejnès: La belle histoire. L'équipe de France de football. L'Équipe, Issy-les-Moulineaux 2004 ISBN 2-951-96053-0
  • L'Équipe / Gérard Ejnès: Coupe de France. La folle épopée. L'Équipe, Issy-les-Moulineaux 2007 ISBN 978-2-915-53562-4

Web links

Remarks

  1. ↑ a b Dreykopf, p. 208
  2. ↑ a b Dupont, p. 338
  3. ↑ L'Équipe / Ejnès, Coupe, p. 122
  4. ↑ L'Équipe / Ejnès, Coupe, pp. 339/340
  5. ↑ L'Équipe / Ejnès, Coupe, pp. 339 and 342
  6. ↑ L'Équipe / Ejnès, Coupe, p. 346
  7. ^ Hubert Beaudet: Le Championnat et ses champions. 70 ans de Football en France. Alan Sutton, Saint-Cyr-sur-Loire 2002 ISBN 2-84253-762-9 , p. 13
  8. ↑ Almanach du football éd. 1933/34. Paris 1934, p. 64
  9. ↑ Almanach du football éd. 1934/35. Paris 1935, p. 104
  10. ↑ Dupont, p. 339
  11. ↑ L'Équipe / Ejnès, Belle histoire, pp. 298-301.
  12. ↑ L'Équipe / Ejnès, Belle histoire, p. 366
  13. ↑ Chaumier, p. 309
  14. ↑ according to Almanach du football éd. 1932/33. Paris 1933, p. 74, and Almanach du football éd. 1933/34. Paris 1934, p. 64
  15. ^ Folke Havekost / Volker Stahl: Football World Cup 1930 Uruguay. AGON, Kassel 2002 ISBN 3-89784-245-9 , p. 58
  16. ^ According to L'Équipe / Ejnès, Belle histoire, p. 378, on December 27th
  17. ↑ Chaumier, p. 310
  18. ↑ Dreykopf, p. 209
personal data
SURNAME Villaplane, Alexandre
BRIEF DESCRIPTION French soccer player
DATE OF BIRTH September 12, 1905
PLACE OF BIRTH Algiers
DATE OF DEATH December 26, 1944
Place of death Arcueil