Eugène Maës
Eugène Maës (born September 15, 1890 in Paris , † March 30, 1945 in Ellrich , Germany) was a French football player .
The club career
The goal-scoring striker first played in the childhood years of French football for Patronage Olier Paris , a club from the Catholic sports movement FGSPF, where excellent youth work was carried out. At that time there was no professionalism in France, no national top division and no uniform football association. The existing associations each chose their champion, and from 1907 they carried out a championship finals called Trophée de France ; however, the champion of the oldest and arguably the strongest association, the Union des Sociétés Françaises de Sports Athlétiques (USFSA), was excluded. In 1908 Patronage Olier won this national title (Maës scored the final goal to win 3-0 in the final against SM Puteaux ), also in 1910 (again with a Maës goal in the final against CA Vitry ).
Then Eugène Maës laced the boots for Red Star AC , which belonged to the Ligue de Football Association (LFA), a small association that had split off from the USFSA in 1910. In 1912 Maës, who scored numerous goals with his head, won the French LFA title with his club, but then failed in the finals of the association champions at the Paris FGSPF title holder Étoile des Deux Lacs .
The national player
Between January 1911 and April 1913 Eugène Maës played eleven internationals for the French national team and scored 15 goals. That is all the more highly valued as the Équipe tricolore often suffered heavy defeats in the early years and there was little opportunity for a striker to excel. Nevertheless, Maës managed to beat the opposing goalkeeper three times (and each time with a header) in Turin in 1912 and thus contributed significantly to France's first victory against Italy . A year later - even if "only" against Luxembourg - he even scored five goals in one encounter and thus set a record in the Bleus team that is still valid today (as of March 2015) , which has only been achieved once since then (1956 by Thadée Cisowski ) was hired. Along with Bard , Chayriguès , R. Dubly , Ducret and Hanot, Maës was one of the outstanding French footballers of the 1910s. In 1914 he could not take part in a single international game because of his military service.
Life after his active time
During the First World War , Eugène Maës suffered a serious wound that prevented him from continuing his promising career. He moved to Normandy and worked as a swimming instructor, and also played football for the local SM Caen for many years . In the interwar period, he was one of the first players to market their name: the “Maës Spécial” football boot made of yellow leather was offered for 13.50 francs per pair. During the occupation of France in World War II , he was deported to Germany in August 1943 due to a denunciation of anti-German statements and murdered a few weeks before the liberation in the Dora-Mittelbau concentration camp .
Palmarès
- French champion : Nothing
- Trophée de France winner : 1908, 1910 (and finalist 1912)
- French cup winner : the competition was only introduced in 1917/18
- 11 senior internationals, 15 goals
- French top scorer with 5 goals in an international match
| personal data | |
|---|---|
| SURNAME | Maës, Eugène |
| BRIEF DESCRIPTION | French soccer player |
| DATE OF BIRTH | September 15, 1890 |
| PLACE OF BIRTH | Paris |
| DATE OF DEATH | March 30, 1945 |
| Place of death | Ellrich |