Fleury Di Nallo

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Fleury Di Nallo (born April 20, 1943 in Lyon ) is a former French football player .

Club career

The striker first appeared at Olympique , the club in his hometown, in Division 1 at the age of 17 , performed well as an addition to the experienced striker Eugène Njo-Léa and held the club for the next 14 years Loyalty. He soon got the affectionate nickname “The Little Prince of Gerland ”, which also alluded to his rather slim stature. Di Nallo was technically adept, fast and imaginative, but had problems in physical duels because of his athletic deficits. Nevertheless, he was incredibly dangerous and formed in the first half of the 1960s, together with the storm tank Nestor Combin, an effective double top that was able to crack opposing defensive lines. At the end of the 1961/62 season he appeared for the first time far up between the French first division goal scorers (5th place with 18 goals), while his club narrowly escaped relegation. Also in 1965 (13 goals), 1966 (15), 1967 (14), 1968 (even 3rd place with 18 goals), 1971 (21 goals this season were "only" enough for 5th place, but meant his best result of the season), 1972 and 1973 (17 hits each) he was one of the most successful scorers. He is now 8th in the list of the most successful D1 goalscorers of all time . Olympique Lyon, however, remained a "gray mouse" in the championship: 1973/74, in Di Nallo's last season at the Stade Gerland , the club managed to finish third in the table at least once; until then, a fourth place (1963/64) had been the highest ranking in the striker's career. The ruthless tackling of an opponent brought him a double fracture of his shin and kneecap in September 1968 and a break of more than ten months; he crowned his return with two goals in a point game against SEC Bastia .

In the cup competition, however, Fleury Di Nallo and his team were able to keep themselves harmless for the lost championship title. Olympique just failed in the 1963 final - after a 0-0 win, AS Monaco retained the upper hand 2-0 in the replay - but in 1964 it was Lyon that defeated Girondins Bordeaux 2-0 ; Combin scored both goals, and then the defense around Jean Djorkaeff had their hands full to defend the lead. In his third final - FC Sochaux were defeated 3-1 in 1967 - Di Nallo also scored a final goal: two minutes before the final whistle he made the final score. However, this was his only goal in a total of five cup finals. In the 1971 final his team was again goalless and lost 1-0 to Stade Rennes , but in 1973 Lyon scored a 2-1 win over FC Nantes and Fleury Di Nallo was able to celebrate winning the Coupe de France for the third time - at the side of his new strike partner Bernard Lacombe and, among others, together with defender Raymond Domenech .

Incidentally, the lost cup final of 1963 gave him and his club an early big appearance on the European stage: since Monaco had also won division 1 championships that year , Lyon represented France in the European Cup Winners' Cup . After successes over B 1913 Odense and Olympiacos Piraeus , Hamburger SV (1: 1, 2: 0) could be eliminated in the quarter-finals , even if Di Nallo did not score against the North Germans. In the semifinals, the opponent was Sporting Lisbon . After a 0-0 draw at Stade Gerland , Olympique surprisingly managed a 1-1 draw in Portugal's capital, which at that time resulted in a third game on a neutral pitch, as there were no away goals rule. Lyon then lost the play-off in Madrid - two days after a league game and five days before the 1964 national cup final - against the eventual European Cup winners 0-1. Di Nallo and his team-mates were doubly consoled that in European competitions apart from Stade Reims no French club had ever come this far and that at the end of this grueling week they could win the French Cup 1964.

In 1974/75 he laced his shoes for the first division promoted Red Star Paris - incidentally again at the side of his specialist Combin - but the duo was getting on in years and could not prevent Red Star from immediately relegating to the second division as the bottom group had to. While Combin still managed to score 15 goals, Di Nallo only managed five more of the kind that made the “little prince” an unmistakable and permanent figure in French football in just a dozen appearances.
In 1975 a friend brought him to Montpellier La Paillade in the Division d'Honneur , at the time the fourth highest level. 21 Di Nallo goals in 23 league games contributed significantly to Montpellier's promotion to the third division. In his second season there it was no longer quite as successful, so that he ended his active career in 1977 at the age of 34.

Stations

  • Olympique Lyonnais (1960–1974)
  • Red Star Paris (1974/75)
  • Montpellier La Paillade SC (1975–1977)

National player

Between November 1962 and April 1971 Di Nallo was appointed to a total of ten international matches in the senior national team; he scored eight goals in these encounters. In his very first game he met the Hungarians twice , against whom he also played his last international match. The fact that he was not used there more often, but only sporadically, was due on the one hand to his form fluctuations, on the other hand probably also because the various national coaches during the 1960s tended to rely on the more robust goalscorer type, such as those in Gondet from Nantes and Herbin and Revelli from Saint-Etienne also owned. Therefore, although his strike partner in the club, Nestor Combin, found in 1966, but not the "little prince" in France's World Cup squad .

Life after the active time

From 1977 to 1981 Fleury Di Nallo, now as technical director, worked again at Olympique Lyon, which remained unsuccessful in the league and in 1980 even had to go to the barrages against the second division Olympique Avignon to avoid relegation; a cup final did not reach "his" club in these four years either. He then tried his hand at a modest amateur club as a coach, then got into a private crisis and came into conflict with the judiciary. A friend brought him out of this situation, who helped Di Nallo to find a job in the tracing and recruiting department at Montpellier HSC .

Palmarès

literature

  • Louis Naville: Di Nallo - Gondet - Loubet - Revelli. Carré d'as du football. Solar, Paris 1970

Web links

Notes and evidence

  1. ↑ Naville, pp. 207-210
personal data
SURNAME Di Nallo, Fleury
BRIEF DESCRIPTION French soccer player
DATE OF BIRTH April 20, 1943
PLACE OF BIRTH Lyon