CS Blénod
The Club Sportif de Blénod et Pont-à-Mousson or CS Blénod for short is a French football club from Blénod-lès-Pont-à-Mousson in Lorraine .
Blénod's club colors are blue and white; the league team competes in the Stade des Fonderies , which today still has a capacity of around 2,000 spectators.
history
In October 1920, the club was accepted by the Lorraine regional association of the Fédération Française de Football Association . For decades, his teams consisted mainly of employees from the local steelworks of Pont-à-Mousson SA , which owned a large foundry (fonderies) and a rolling mill for sheet metal with up to 2,000 employees in the community. During the Second World War and the German occupation, the amateur club also attracted a number of players, for whom the work in the steel mill represented a protection against the posting of French workers to the Reich territory agreed by the Vichy regime with Nazi Germany . The company gave massive support to the CS Blénod even after the liberation of France. In terms of sport, this had less of an impact in league operations - until the early 1970s, the small-town club mostly only played in the second-highest amateur league, i.e. fourth-class - than in the cup competition (see the section below) . In 1973 he was promoted to the third division for the first time after completing the season without a loss.
When CS Blénod had even qualified for the second division in 1982 , the presidium asked its players whether they wanted to take this risk - even if the club was not prepared to move away from its "philosophy", which it has always maintained since it was founded, and financially Taking risks to strengthen the team. The squad voted by a large majority, but then actually turned out to be too weak to be able to hold the class. Then Blénod commuted between the third and fifth league until the end of the century, but slipped, also due to changes in the league system, then even up to the sixth highest division.
League affiliation and achievements
The club has never had professional status and has never played in the highest French division . However, the first team was one of the club in the 1982/83 season the second highest league in France , which she had to leave after a year bringing up the rear of their group again.
The “steel smelters” proved to be much more successful in the national cup competition for the Coupe de France , in which they “became a legend”. In it they made ten main round participations between 1944 and most recently 1996 , with the focus on the 1950s, when they succeeded in doing this seven times in a row. Overall, the amateurs survived it six times the thirty-second finals, the first main round; In 1945, 1954, 1956 and 1957 the end came in the subsequent sixteenth finals, in 1986 and 1996 they even reached the second round. CS Blénod caused a national sensation in 1944/45 with its 5-2 victory over "big neighbor" FC Metz and again in 1953/54 when he wrested 0-0 after extra time from the eventual cup winners OGC Nice , although he was injured in the end only nine players left on the field.
In the 1985/86 Cup season , the Lorraine met after 3-0 - this win at second division FC Sète brought CS Blénod to the front page of L'Équipe for the first time - and 0-0 at Olympique Marseille . For the round of 16 first leg at the Stade Vélodrome , more than 1,300 supporters from the 4,500-strong community accompanied their CSB, who saw a 3-0 defeat of the fourth against the first division. Nevertheless, more than 4,600 visitors attended the match in the home stadium during the subsequent second leg, so that the steel mill was only able to maintain emergency operations that day. The amateurs pulled out of the affair very well with a 1: 1. Ten years later, the Lorraine players, who are now only in the fifth division, even managed to throw a first division team out of the competition in the first two rounds - initially SC Bastia 1-0 (this time L'Équipe headlined "Beau comme Blénod" , in German "Schön wie Blénod") and then Le Havre AC on penalties after it had been 1: 1 after 120 minutes. Against Le Havre, Blénod's libero Christian Schmitt became a "cup hero": in the 84th minute of the game he prevented the guest from taking the 2-0 lead on his own goal line, and less than 60 seconds later he scored the equalizer for the amateurs - like L'Équipe reported the following day, his first goal in six years. In the round of 16, the CS Blénod met again on Olympique Marseille, which he lost 2-0.
In 2013/14, the CS Blénod team will compete in the sixth class Division d'Honneur .
Well-known former players and coaches
- Joseph Birtel, player 1939–1945 and coach 1945–1973
- Jean-Pierre François , player until 1984, later professional footballer and pop singer
- Marcel Husson , player 1955–1957, later professional footballer
- Édouard Kargulewicz , player in the early 1940s
- Joseph Magiera , player until 1960 and again 1972–1977, in between professional footballer
- Jean Swiatek , player in the early 1940s, later professional footballer
literature
- Thierry Berthou / Collectif: Dictionnaire historique des clubs de football français. Pages de Foot, Créteil 1999, Volume 1, ISBN 2-913146-01-5
- L'Équipe / Gérard Ejnès: Coupe de France. La folle épopée. L'Équipe, Issy-les-Moulineaux 2007, ISBN 978-2-915535-62-4