André Simonyi

André Simonyi (born March 31, 1914 in Huszt ; † July 17, 2002 in Vieux-Moulin , Département Oise ) was a French football player and coach born as András Simonyi in Austria-Hungary . With 136 goals he is still 28th today (June 2008) among the most successful goalscorers in Division 1 .

Club career

Simonyi was one of nine brothers who all played football, four of them in the top division; András was therefore also known as Simonyi II in Hungary. He represented the colors of the Attila FC Miskolc club , where he joined the first team at the age of 15. Not yet quite 18 years old, became a B national player; In the spring of 1933 he is also said to have been in the squad of the Hungarian professional selection against Holland, where he was not used. In France he was regarded as “the child who perfected his hard-hitting shot barefoot on the wall of his parents' house” and by 1930 also attracted Western European clubs to himself.

For the 1933/34 season, the French first division Lille Olympique committed him , which he had noticed at a youth tournament. In his very first season there, the center forward scored 19 goals in the 26 games and was the fourth most successful league goal scorer; the following year he scored 18 goals (9th place on the top scorer list). He did not win a championship title with the northern French, but he reached the cup semi-final with the team in 1934 , in which FC Sète Lille defeated 1-0. In 1935 Simonyi moved to the reigning champions FC Sochaux ; The attacker only stayed there for a year because the team with Roger Courtois and André Abegglen (34 and 16 goals respectively) already had two accurate storm peaks, even though he scored eight goals in only 15 league appearances and reached the semi-finals again. In this, Simonyi's team lost again to the eventual winner of the competition (0: 3 against Racing Paris ); to qualify, Sochaux needed three games against SC Fives in the previous round .

From 1936 to 1946 André Simonyi played for the capital club Red Star Olympique . Lucien Gamblin was responsible for this change ; the multiple national player, meanwhile a journalist with l'Auto , kept bringing players to his ex-club, and for 125,000 francs the Hungarian was downright a “bargain”. He remained loyal to the Audoniens - a common name for the residents of the Paris suburb of Saint-Ouen and the players of the club based there - even when they only competed in the second division in the 1938/39 season. Simonyi's 21 goals in the game (sixth best D1 goalscorer) could not prevent relegation any more than the fact that he had a congenial partner in Alfred Aston in an “inspiring attack”; with Aston he was seven of his ten Red Star years and two subsequent stations in a team.

The outbreak of war and the German occupation of France did not prevent him from winning titles with the Audoniens in the years that followed . This contributed to the fact that the team was able to significantly strengthen its personnel, including through Vandooren , with whom Simonyi had already played in Lille, goalkeeper Darui , Roessler and the South Americans Herrera , Scopelli and Stábile . Simonyi himself developed into the undisputed head of the team and also had captain skills; Gabriel Hanot praised him in 1942 in the Miroir des Sports as “more athletic, snappy, more perfect than ever, full of dynamism, an iron will and with a high understanding of the game”. In the 1940/41 season Red Star was champion of the northern group of the two-part Division 1 and reached the final of the occupied zone of France in the cup; Zone cup and championships from 1939/40 to 1944/45, however, still count as unofficial titles. A year later, however, Red Star won the only official competition of those war years: after they won the occupied zone final against Stade Reims (1-0, goal by Simonyi) and then the one against the winner of the "forbidden zone", the RC Lens (1 : 1 a.d. and 5: 2, again a Simonyi goal in the replay game), Red Star faced the cup winner of the unoccupied France , FC Sète, in the nationwide final . Unlike in 1934, Simonyi's team prevailed this time against the southern French and took the Coupe de France after a 2-0 victory . This year he - whose naturalization date cannot yet be precisely determined - also became a French national player (see below) . Apart from the 1943/44 season, when regional selection teams took on the role of club teams across France - André Simonyi took a good third place in the league with the Équipe Fédérale Paris-Capitale - the striker only made headlines twice: 1944/45 was He was the third best scorer in the northern group with 29 goals, and in 1946 he reached the cup final again with Red Star, but lost 4-2 to Lille Olympique SC and remained, as in 1942, without his own goal.

His obligations through Stade Rennes (1946, for a million francs transfer fee) and the SCO Angers (early 1947, even 1.7 million FF) brought the "veteran" yet another income, but no more sporting improvement. This was followed by a whole series of other short-term changes, first to Stade Français Paris and in the same season for second division FC Rouen 1948/49 Simonyi returned to the Red Star, which was briefly merged with Stade Français, but only played one first division game. He then went to SC Covilhã in Portugal , returned one last time to the Première Division in 1952 - there were eleven appearances and five goals for CO Roubaix-Tourcoing  -, then played two games for the Audoniens and was finally active again in Covilhã .

Around 1960 his name appeared for the last time on the sports pages: he briefly coached "his" Red Star, a club from Fontainebleau and then AS Cherbourg , for which he also fielded himself in 13 second division games until 1962 and even scored four goals scored. At this point, André Simonyi was in the second half of his fifth decade.

Stations

• Attila FC Miskolc (until 1933)
• Olympique Lillois (1933-1935)
• Football Club Sochaux-Montbéliard (1935/36)
• Red Star Olympique (1936-1943)
• Équipe Fédérale Paris-Capitale (1943/44)
• Red Star Olympique (1944-1946)
• Stade Rennais Université Club (1946, first half of the season)
• Angers Sporting Club de l'Ouest (1947, second half of 1946/47 and part of first half of 1947/48, in D2)
• Stade Français (1947/48)
• Football Club de Rouen (1948, in D2)
• Stade Red Star (1948/49)
• Sporting Clube da Covilhã (Portugal, 1949–?)
• Club Olympique Roubaix-Tourcoing (1952)
• Red Star Olympique Audonies (1953, in D2)
• Sporting Clube da Covilhã (1953–?)
• Club Sportif de Fontainebleau (as coach)
• Red Star Olympique Audonien (1959/60, as trainer in D2)
• Association Sportive de Cherbourg (1960–1962, as player-coach in D2)

In the national team

Between March 1942 and April 1945, André Simonyi was in four meetings with the French national team ; he also managed a hit. His first two appearances (a 0-2 against Switzerland in 1942 and a 0-4 against Spain ) took place on the occasion of the only two international matches that France played after January 1940 and before the liberation in 1944. Simonyi's international games number three (December 1944, 3-1 victory over Belgium ) and four (0-1 against Switzerland) were the Bleus' first games in the post-war period. Subsequently, the French selection committee preferred Bihel or Bongiorni as center forward , Ben Barek , Heisserer and Siklo , who grew up like Simonyi at Attila FC Miskolc , in the half- forward positions .

Palmarès

• French champion: 1941 (unofficial title)
• French Cup Winner: 1942 (and finalist 1946)
• 4 international matches (1 goal) for France
• B national player for Hungary
• Number of games that cannot be determined exactly and 136 goals in Division 1 , including at least 63 goals for Red Star, 37 for Lille, 5 for Roubaix-Tourcoing

Life after the time in football

After a career of more than 30 years as an active footballer, he “threw himself into gambling ”: he worked at the casino at the Avia Club de France in Divonne-les-Bains , then at the casino in Évian and then in an establishment on the Champs. Élysées , "before settling on the racecourse of Joinville-le-Pont looking round." At Red Star, however, he was not forgotten: in 1993, he was allowed to kick off the 1000th Audoniens point game. Simonyi later settled in Picardy , where he died at the age of 88.

literature

• Marc Barreaud: Dictionnaire des footballeurs étrangers du championnat professionnel français (1932–1997). L'Harmattan, Paris 1998 ISBN 2-7384-6608-7
• 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
• Sophie Guillet / François Laforge: Le guide français et international du football éd. 2007. Vecchi, Paris 2006 ISBN 2-7328-6842-6
• Paul Hurseau / Jacques Verhaeghe: Les immortels du football nordiste. Alan Sutton, Saint-Cyr-sur-Loire 2003 ISBN 2-84253-867-6
• L'Équipe / Gérard Ejnès: Coupe de France. La folle épopée. L'Équipe, Issy-les-Moulineaux 2007 ISBN 978-2-915-53562-4
• François de Montvalon / Frédéric Lombard / Joël Simon: Red Star. Histoires d'un siècle. Club du Red Star, Paris 1999 ISBN 2-95125-620-5

Remarks

1. ^ Dénes Tamás / Peterdi Pál / Rochy Zoltán / Selmeci József: Kalandozó magyar labdarúgók. Budapest 1999, p. 239
2. ↑ de Montvalon / Lombard / Simon, p. 69; Hurseau / Verhaeghe, p. 119; similar to Chaumier, p. 278
3. ↑ Guillet / Laforge, pp. 135/136
4. ↑ L'Équipe / Ejnès, Coupe, p. 350
5. ↑ Almanach du football éd. 1935/36. Paris 1936, p. 47
6. ↑ L'Équipe / Ejnès, Coupe, p. 352
7. ↑ de Montvalon / Lombard / Simon, p. 69
8. ↑ Chaumier, p. 278
9. ↑ de Montvalon / Lombard / Simon, p. 91
10. ↑ L'Équipe / Ejnès, Coupe, p. 358
11. ↑ Guillet / Laforge, p. 146
12. ↑ L'Équipe / Ejnès, Coupe, p. 362
13. ^ Alfred Wahl / Pierre Lanfranchi: Les footballeurs professionnels des années trente à nos jours. Hachette, Paris 1995 ISBN 978-2-0123-5098-4 , p. 145
14. ↑ In these years it is difficult to determine when exactly Simonyi played for the respective club; for example, the times given differ between the website of the Fédération Française de Football and Barreaud, p. 164.
15. ↑ ^{a b} de Montvalon / Lombard / Simon, p. 282
16. ↑ after Stéphane Boisson / Raoul Vian: Il était une fois le Championnat de France de Football. Tous les joueurs de la première division de 1948/49 à 2003/04. Neofoot, Saint-Thibault o. J.
17. ↑ Barreaud, p. 164
18. ↑ Hurseau / Verhaeghe, pp. 117 and 119
19. ↑ L'Équipe / Gérard Ejnès: La belle histoire. L'équipe de France de football. L'Équipe, Issy-les-Moulineaux 2004 ISBN 2-951-96053-0 , pp. 308/309
20. ↑ Chaumier, pp. 278f.

Web links

• Data sheet with photo on the website of the French Association (not free from temporal errors)