Edmond Haan

Edmond Haan (born May 25, 1924 in Schorndorf ; † August 15, 2018 ) was a French football player and football coach who spent a significant part of his career at the Racing Strasbourg club and played four times for the French national team. In 1961 he ended his career as a professional footballer, while he worked as a coach until 1972.

Club career

The 171 centimeter tall striker Haan lived as a teenager in Strasbourg, which was part of the German Empire as part of Alsace during World War II , and began playing football at a local club. After the end of the war and the return of the region to the national territory of France, he played for the Pierrots Strasbourg before he was signed by the first division club Racing Strasbourg in 1947 at the age of 23. The player, who was preferred on the left wing , was used regularly from the start and was able to score his first goal in the top division on the seventh matchday of the 1947/48 season against FC Toulouse . In the following season he was able to establish himself increasingly in the first team, but at the same time experienced the crash of his team, which in 1949 as seventeenth in the table only remained in the league due to the forced relegation of regional rivals SR Colmar . Haan, however, had to go into the second division personally, as he was awarded to Olympique Nîmes .

In the Nîmes jersey, Haan came into the focus of the national public when he hit the goal a total of 27 times during the 1949/50 season, becoming the top scorer in the second division and helping his club to the second division championship and the associated promotion. This aroused the interest of numerous well-known clubs, but Strasbourg had set the transfer fee for him at an extremely high amount of six million French francs for the time, which deterred potential interested parties. He had previously been on the verge of reaching an agreement with the Stade Reims . So the player returned to Strasbourg against his will, where he became the undisputed top performer and a leading player in the team. As a goalscorer, he remained dangerous and scored more than ten goals this season between 1950 and 1953. With his teammates he made it into the national cup final in 1951 . He was on the pitch when his team secured the trophy thanks to a 3-0 win over US Valenciennes . The left winger, who had scored twice in the quarter-finals, prepared the 1-0 win by René Bihel .

Following the cup win, a year began in which Haan not only suffered from an injury, but also had to experience relegation to the second division at the end of the 1951/52 season. Nevertheless, he remained loyal to Strasbourg and scored 14 goals in the following second division year, although he missed about half of the season due to injury. So he made his contribution to direct resurgence in 1953. From 1954, Haan, who had previously been transferred to the captaincy, occupied a position in the attacking midfield , where he formed a game-creating duo together with the newly signed Austrian Ernst Stojaspal . This started a successful phase and in 1955 both championship and cup victory appeared possible, but Haan injured himself during this time and ultimately it remained in fourth place and a failure in the cup semi-finals. In 1957 there was a descent, which was followed by a direct resurgence in 1958. The former striker Haan was integrated into the defense line in many games to help stabilize it. On January 27, 1960, he was expelled from a match against FC Limoges due to a discussion with the referee of the field and was thus partly to blame for the 8-0 defeat of his team. At the end of the season, the relegation followed. At first he planned to end his career in view of this, but then he decided to continue and in 1961 participated in the resurgence of the Alsatians. At this point, in the year of his 37th birthday, he ended his professional career after 255 first division games with 56 goals and 87 second division games with 47 goals.

National team

Haan was 27 years old when he made his debut for the French national team on May 12, 1951 in a 2-2 draw with Northern Ireland . The friendly match was followed by two more games and then a break of more than two years before he wore his country's jersey for the last time on November 11, 1953 in a 2: 4 defeat against Switzerland. All four international matches he was able to play were friendlies and he remained without a goal in the course of them.

Coaching career

While he was still playing as a player for RC Strasbourg in second division games, he took over responsibility as coach of the club's second team in the 1960/61 season. In 1961 he gave up the office again. With FC Kronenburg it was in 1965 a club from the Strasbourg suburb of Cronenbourg that introduced him as the new coach. He led the amateur club in 1969 in the third division, before relegation followed in 1971. 1972 ended his coaching career.

Individual evidence

1. ↑ ^{a b} Edmond HAAN , racingstub.com
2. ↑ Joueur - Edmond HAAN , fff.fr