Francis Méano

Francis Méano (born May 22, 1931 in Puyloubier , Bouches-du-Rhône department , † June 25, 1953 near Witry-lès-Reims , Marne department ) was a French football player .

biography

In April 1949, the 17-year-old, slender left winger , who played for AS Aix-en-Provence , won the European Junior Championship in Amsterdam with the French junior national team and was signed by Stade de Reims shortly afterwards , a few weeks later for the first Times in the club's history won the French championship title. The intention was to build up the talented southern French in the second team, which had also become French amateur champions in 1948. But Francis Méano convinced the player-coach Henri Roessler in the preparation time for the new season , which he was at the season opener in August 1949 in the professional team. On the second day of the match he scored his first goal in Division 1 in Rennes , and 14 days later he scored two goals in one game against Racing Club in Paris' Prinzenpark . A month later, in October 1949, the young striker was already used in the B national team and on December 11, his first appearance for the French A team followed .

At the end of the 1949/50 season, Reims was in fourth place in the table and had won the national cup ( Coupe de France ) for the first time . Méano scored four goals on the way, among other things in the round of 32. In the final, he scored the decisive 1-0 in the 81st minute - again in Paris against the Racing Club.

With twelve league goals, Méano had become the red-whites' most accurate player in his first season in the men's division. This performance is all the more highly valued as Reims already had other goal- hungry attackers in these first post-war years with Pierre Sinibaldi , Pierre Flamion , Pierre Bini and the Dutch goal-getter Bram Appel, who also came to Champagne at the beginning of the season .

As a result, the new player-coach Albert Batteux Méano obliged to keep the outside position and to feed the inside strikers with templates, especially since 1951 with Raymond Kopa , another dangerous offensive player had come to Stade Reims. The implementation of the concept of the coach, which made Reims one of the best European teams in the following decade, led to adjustment and adjustment problems; the team from the Stade Auguste-Delaune landed in the league in 1951 and 1952 respectively on rank 4 and could not defend the cup. Nevertheless, Méano continued to meet regularly and had his regular place in the club safe. It was different in the Equipe Tricolore : the selection committee of the football association had apparently found it "too easy" after his debut and preferred to occupy the left wing with André Doye from Bordeaux or Pierre Flamion, who had left Reims in 1950.

In October 1952 he was again in the national team, which returned from Vienna with a 2-1 victory over Austria . In the league, the offensive, reinforced by Léon Glovacki, finally scored 86 goals (eleven of them by the left winger), the defense only conceded 36 goals (in 34 games), the team had found their ideal formation (only 14 players used) and in the end the French master was called Stade de Reims. In the last game of the season, the opponent was the same as on the second matchday in 1949: Stade Rennes was outclassed 5-1 and Méano, who had married two days earlier on his 22nd birthday, scored a goal as then. Qualified as national champions for the Coupe Latine , Reims first met FC Valencia (2-1) in Portugal at the beginning of June and defeated AC Milan (3-0) in the final . Kopa scored three goals, Méano contributed one goal in both games and received brilliant reviews, especially after the final.

On the afternoon of June 25, 1953 , a van loaded with gravestones and a car crashed into each other on the dead straight Route Nationale 51 not far from Reims. None of the six vehicle occupants survived the collision. Francis Méano, his wife, his father, his brother-in-law Antonio Abenoza (until 1952 second goalkeeper at Stade Reims) and his wife sat in the car .

On the 50th anniversary of his death in 2003, his home parish Puyloubier named the local stadium after Francis Méano. His brother Guy , who was three years his junior, was also a professional footballer.

Palmarès

• French champion : 1953
• French cup winner : 1950
• Coupe Latine winner : 1953
• 114 D1 appearances , 45 goals
• 2 international matches (1949 and 1952)

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