Eugène Njo-Léa

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Eugène Njo-Léa (born July 15, 1931 in Batuchi , † October 23, 2006 in Douala ) was a Cameroonian football player and official who played most of his career in France . There he is also considered the "father" of the professional footballers union founded in 1961.

The player

In 1951, Njo-Léa, who had received a state scholarship and had played football in Douala at a small club called Vent Lalanne , came to France. In addition to his school education, he played football near his new home Roanne at the third-rate amateur club CO Roche-la-Molière and attracted the attention of several professional clubs when he scored three goals in a cup match in early 1954 against the second division Stade Olympique Montpelliérain . After the first division AS Saint-Étienne supported him in admission to a local lycée , he accepted to play for the "Verts" ( the Greens , the name commonly used in France for the ASSE). From 1954, their coach Jean Snella carefully built him into the league eleven. In the first two years he completed 34 missions in her, in which he scored nine goals. At the side of players like Rachid Mekhloufi , Claude Abbes and Kees Rijvers , the not so young storm talent developed into a regular player: In the 1956/57 season, Njo-Léa scored 29 of the 88 league goals of his team in 32 appearances, which were decisive contributed to the fact that the until then only moderately successful club won its first championship title. At the same time, the newcomer landed in third place on the top scorer list behind such illustrious names as Thadée Cisowski and Just Fontaine .

Saint-Étienne could not defend the championship, but the center forward was also highly successful in the following years: in 1957/58 he was the twelfth best scorer in the league with 14 goals this season, 1958/59 with 18 goals. In the meantime, since the industrial city of Saint-Étienne did not yet have a university at that time, he began studying political and legal sciences in Lyon . In 1959 commuting between the two cities became too much for him, so from then on he played football at his place of study. In the little more than two years at Olympique Lyon , he managed to play 50 first division games despite his successfully completed studies there, and in 1960/61 he was once again in the front of the league scorer with 14 goals. However, his club only barely managed to avoid relegation in both years.

In the late summer of 1961, Eugène Njo-Léa moved to Paris to add to his degree in public law an education at the Institut des hautes études d'Outre-mer , which should enable him to embark on a diplomatic career . During this time he wore the jersey of the traditional Racing Club , but only twice in its first team, which at the end of the season had to be content with the runner-up title behind Stade Reims due to the slightly poorer goal difference . Meanwhile, Njo-Léa stayed in Rome more often than in Paris because he was doing an internship at the French embassy there.

Club stations as a professional

  • AS Saint-Étienne (1954–1959; 133 games and 70 hits in the D1)
  • Olympique de Lyon (1959-autumn 1961; 50 games and 23 goals in the D1)
  • Racing Club de Paris (1961/62; 2 games in D1)

The idea of ​​a players union

In France in the 1950s and 1960s no professional footballer could leave his club until his 35th birthday without his consent, which Raymond Kopa summed up in an interview with the words "The players are slaves of the clubs" (see also here ) . The clubs and the football association had no interest in fundamentally changing these conditions. Given this dependency of the players on their first club, Eugène Njo-Léa made early advocates for a change in the license terms and encouraged the professionals to organize themselves to represent their interests together. In addition to the legally trained Njo-Léa, who was considered to be the driving force, the "century scorer" Just Fontaine took part in the propagation of this idea, which on November 6, 1961 led to the establishment of the Union Nationale des Footballeurs Professionnels (UNFP) players' union . When setting up the organization, which even with many players did not meet with unreserved approval from the start and required enormous persuasion, the Cameroonian benefited from another quality in addition to his diplomatic nature: "Eugène had a new idea every 30 seconds" (Fontaine). However, it would then take almost eight years before the UNFP, under its new chairman Michel Hidalgo , was able to enforce "equality of arms" between clubs and players on contractual issues.

Career diplomat and ambassador for African football

In 1962 or 1963, Njo-Léa decided in view of his multiple workloads to hang up his football boots, especially since he had once described himself as an "occasional footballer". Even after he was in France, he is said to have trained with his former clubs - which was probably relatively seldom possible, because he worked in several embassies in his homeland, Cameroon, which became independent in 1960, and soon became a close advisor to the organisation's general secretary for African Unity (OAU) by the Guinean Diallo Telli . In May 1970, the President of Cameroon appointed the diplomat to the commission, which then determined the controversial border with neighboring Nigeria .

Since the 1970s he tried in many countries on the black continent and with great personal and financial commitment to propagate his ideas for the development of successful structures for African football. He foresaw the danger of the national leagues "bleeding out" if they - while retaining specifically African characteristics - did not develop a similar sporting and financial attractiveness for players as the European professional leagues. At the same time, however, he wanted to see the rights of these players enshrined right from the start - a motif of his involvement that has recurred over the decades. During this mission he met more closed ears than open ears - and not only from foreign princes who feared for their personal glory and benefices, but also from politicians in his country of origin: for example, at Christmas 1987 he had a soccer tournament in Yaoundé organized and partly financed by private funds, partly through sponsors, to which not only local teams but also the French teams Racing Lens , AS Nancy , Stade Reims and Stade Laval had agreed. The tournament never took place because the Cameroonian Football Association felt that it had been ignored and a state authority refused to stamp a document ... At least the Cameroon players took Njo-Léa's advice and, with his active support, created a union, the Association des footballeurs camerounais ( AFC).

Eugène Njo-Léa later regretted that he had found more support with his ideas for African football in Europe than on his own continent; it was "football for us Africans a weapon in the struggle against underdevelopment and for their own self-confidence" .

In 2005 he had to undergo a complicated leg operation, which the AFC and "his" UNFP contributed to. In October 2006, at the age of 75, Eugène Njo-Léa died in a hospital in Douala . His son William also stormed in the top French league from 1983 to 1989 and played a total of 119 games (27 goals) for Stade Brest , Paris Saint-Germain , RC Lens and SM Caen .

Palmarès as a football player

literature

  • Christophe Barge / Laurent Tranier: Vert passion. Les plus belles histoires de l'AS Saint-Étienne. Timée, Boulogne 2004 ISBN 2-915586-04-7
  • Just Fontaine: Reprise de volée. Solar, unspecified 1970
  • Michel Hidalgo (and Patrice Burchkalter): Le temps des bleus. Mémoires. Jacob-Duvernet, Paris 2007 ISBN 978-2-84724-146-4
  • Raymond Kopa (and Paul Katz): Mon football. Calmann-Lévy, Paris 1972
  • Frédéric Parmentier: AS Saint-Étienne, histoire d'une légende. Cahiers intempestifs, Saint-Étienne 2004 ISBN 2-911698-31-2

Remarks

  1. ↑ L'Équipe / Gérard Ejnès: Coupe de France. La folle épopée. L'Équipe, Issy-les-Moulineaux 2007 ISBN 978-2-915-53562-4 , pp. 370 and 430
personal data
SURNAME Njo-Léa, Eugène
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Cameroonian soccer player and official
DATE OF BIRTH July 15, 1931
PLACE OF BIRTH Batuchi
DATE OF DEATH October 23, 2006
Place of death Douala