Dominique Colonna

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Dominique Colonna (born September 4, 1928 in Corte , Corsica ) is a former French football player .

The club career

The goalkeeper , who is only 1.72 meters tall , left Corsica to complete his professional training on the mainland and was promptly signed by the first division club Stade Olympique Montpelliérain . Already there he earned the nickname "The Flying Gatekeeper" because of his style of play, so that the ambitious city club Stade Français Paris lured him to the capital , where he guarded the gate for the next six years, even if the club was in the second division for two years had to play.

Dominique Colonna's rise to No. 1 in France only began when he switched to OGC Nice (1955): in his first year he made a decisive contribution to the club's third championship title (after 1951 and 1952) on the Côte d 'Azure could get. And when Stade de Reims was looking for a successor for his long-time keeper Paul Sinibaldi (also from Central Corsica), he switched to the Rémois in 1957 and dissolved the interim no. 1, René-Jean Jacquet , from. In Champagne , the "little Corsican" became a national player in the same year, won three further championship titles in the six years, the national cup and the Supercup, reached the 1959 UEFA Champions League final and ended his career in 1963 with a runner-up.

Stations

  • US Corte
  • Stade Olympique Montpelliérain (1948/49)
  • Stade Français Paris (1949–1955)
  • OGC Nice (1955–1957)
  • Stade de Reims (1957–1963)

The national player

Between September 1957 and April 1961 Dominique Colonna played a total of 13 times in the Equipe Tricolore , was also a World Cup participant in Sweden and was third there - but without a single appearance: the national coach Albert Batteux , who was also Colonna's trainer in Reims, placed in the first two finals encounters François Remetter on; When it came to the question of who should replace him, the Corsican refused to take part in a "decision training" against Claude Abbes proposed by the association official Alex Thépot (himself ex-national goalkeeper ) , so that the latter was called up in all subsequent games. Only then did Colonna become the goalkeeper here as well, wearing the Gallic Rooster nine times on her chest, but missing the European Football Championship in 1960 . After a bitter defeat in Switzerland (2: 6 in April 1961) his time for Les Bleus ended .

Life after the player career

In the more than 40 years from the end of his career to the present, Dominique Colonna has remained connected to football. From 1964/65 he trained the Indomitable Lions ( Cameroon's national team ) and advised several associations in Central Africa until the mid-1970s. To this day, he is a popular and well-liked expert among footballers, associations and the media all over Africa, who even at 75 still takes very clear positions: for years he has criticized the "Europeanization" of African football, which he sees as robbed of its independent strengths ( see e.g. the web link below ).

After the end of the Bernard Tapie era , he became Vice President at Olympique Marseille in 1993 , worked in an important position for Horst Dassler ( Adidas ) and was also chairman of his home club US Corte. In 2000 he came into discussion for the successor to Claude Simonet as chairman of the French football association FFF; But Colonna was probably too opinionated and uncomfortable for such a position - after all, the Corsican had repeatedly attacked the FFF in previous years because of its (as he saw it) one-sided preference for professionals at the expense of the broad amateur base.

He (s) also runs the hotel "Dominique Colonna" in the Restonica valley near his inner-Corsican hometown, in which every room bears the name of a French footballer of the 1950s who he considered important.

Palmarès

literature

  • Jean Cornu: Les grandes equipes françaises de football. Famot, Genève 1978
  • Pascal Grégoire-Boutreau / Tony Verbicaro: Stade de Reims - une histoire sans fin. Cahiers intempestifs, Saint-Étienne 2001 ISBN 2-911698-21-5
  • Michel Hubert / Jacques Pernet: Stade de Reims. Sa legend. Atelier Graphique, Reims 1992, ISBN 2-9506272-2-6
  • L'Équipe (ed.): Stade de Reims. Un club à la Une. L'Équipe, Issy-les-Moulineaux 2006 ISBN 2-915535-41-8
  • Lucien Perpère / Victor Sinet / Louis Tanguy: Reims de nos amours. 1931/1981 - 50 ans de Stade de Reims. Alphabet Cube, Reims 1981
  • Jacques and Thomas Poncelet: Supporters du Stade de Reims 1935-2005. Self-published, Reims 2005, ISBN 2-9525704-0-X

Web links

personal data
SURNAME Colonna, Dominique
BRIEF DESCRIPTION French soccer goalkeeper
DATE OF BIRTH September 4, 1928
PLACE OF BIRTH Corte , Corsica , France