Henri Guérin

This article is about the football player and coach Henri Guérin. For other people, see Henri Guérin (disambiguation)

Henri Guérin (born August 27, 1921 in Montmirail , Département Marne , † April 2, 1995 in Saint-Coulomb , Département Ille-et-Vilaine ) was a French football player and coach ; from 1962 to 1966 he coached France's national team .

Player career

In the club

Henri Guérin came to his mother's homeland in Brittany when he was seven . Initially, he acquired sporting merits as a track and field athlete rather than a football player, although he did both sports for La Tour d'Auvergne , a club from the Catholic sports movement FSGP in Rennes : during World War I and the German occupation of France , he was Brittany champion over 100 m (Best time: 11.1 seconds) and in the long jump , in which he also set a Breton record in 1942 with 6.85 m. In the football season 1943/44, when regional national teams took the place of club teams in the French Division 1 , he played in the Équipe fédérale Rennes-Bretagne and then for a few months for Drapeau Fougères before he returned to Rennes and at Stade Rennais Université Club Turned professional. Guerin was a strong and combative conditionally technically not particularly gifted, but equipped with a good game overview defenders , who in 1948 first appointed to the senior team (see below ) . In the six years at Rennes there were no titles to be won, but at least it was enough to get 4th (1948/49) and 5th (1945/46) in the top division.

In 1951 he moved to the capital club Stade Français , with whom he returned a year later as a second division champion in Division 1, and in 1953 to AS Aix - again in Division 2 - where he met Jean Prouff , with whom he was already in Rennes and at the national team had played together. From 1955 to 1961 Henri Guérin worked as a player- coach at Stade Rennes UC, who initially oscillated between first and second class (promotions in 1956 and 1958, relegation in 1957).

Stations

• La Tour d'Auvergne de Rennes (until 1943)
• Équipe fédérale Rennes-Bretagne (1943/44)
• Drapeau de Fougères (1944)
• Stade Rennais Université Club (1945–1951)
• Stade Français Paris (1951–1953, 1951/52 in D2)
• Association Sportive Aixoise (1953–1955, in D2)
• Stade Rennais UC (1955–1961, as player-coach; 1955/56 and 1957/58 in D2)

From 1948 135 games and 4 goals (106/3 for Rennes) in the top division; Complete figures are not available for the previous years.

In the national team

As early as 1942 he played for the eleven of the Catholic sports federation FSGP internationally against Portugal, also in the Breton national team for the Coupe des Provinces de France . From October 1948 to June 1949, Henri Guérin was also appointed to three A-internationals for the Équipe tricolore ; following a 1: 5 defeat to Spain , after the Guérin much appreciated Union sélectionneur (see below) Gabriel Hanot resigned, and the defender declared the end of its activities in the blue national shirt.

The trainer

After the time as a player-coach at Stade Rennes, Henri Guérin took the position as coach at the first division AS Saint-Etienne in 1961 . Things didn't go well for the Verts in the championship , but all the better in the cup : ASSE had to relegate at the end of the season, but after a 1-0 final win over FC Nancy, they entered the Coupe de France winners list. But Guérin only experienced these contrasting “seasonal highlights” from afar because he was released early in March 1962.

He was then appointed in July 1962 by the Football Association (FFF) as the successor to Albert Batteux , who until 1964 was only responsible for the physical fitness of the players - player selection and team line-up was subject to one or more Sélectionneurs , and their "stronger Man “was called Georges Verriest at that time . After some successful appearances, such as the 1: 1 and 5: 2 against England (qualification for the EM 1964 ) as well as respectable successes such as the 2: 2 in the West German (1962) and the 0: 0 in the Spanish national team (1963), that meant Failure against Hungary in the European Championship quarter-finals was a first setback for Guérin.

As a coach, he put a lot of emphasis on the physical robustness of his players - certainly understandable from his own earlier role as a player - and he hired the teams more defensively. On the other hand, he introduced the offensive 4-2-4 system at the Bleus , which prevailed in most of the internationally successful club and selection teams in the mid-1960s. In July 1964 - after the European Championship defeat, the FFF abolished the selection committee - he became the first national coach of France with sole responsibility - initially under the double title of Sélectionneur-Entraîneur  - and in this role, Henri Guérin led the Équipe tricolore after successes over Luxembourg , Norway and especially the feared opponent Yugoslavia at the 1966 World Cup finals . There, however, his team experienced a fiasco: two goals and a lean dots (against Mexico ) in three games meant to last place in the preliminary round group had what helped that Guerin "between disparate system proposals of its two Cotrainer Jasseron and Domergue back and herschwankte " . Both players and the local sports press accused the coach of a defensive attitude that was based on the Catenaccio ; For example, the fact that he did not use a creative head like Lucien Muller ( FC Barcelona ) for a single minute and Robert Budzynski , who organized the back four on a line at FC Nantes , played as an additional backup behind the defense, met with widespread incomprehension. Midfielder Robert Herbin ( AS Saint-Étienne ) was quoted as saying: "At the club we don't play these concrete tactics, we score goals." When the national coach did not resign himself, the FFF replaced him on an interim basis in September 1966 with a successful club coach duo, Jean Snella from AS Saint-Étienne and José Arribas from FC Nantes.

Henri Guérin subsequently trained the youth national team ( Espoirs ) and in 1970 became a member of the Direction Technique Nationale (DTN), a newly created association body. In this function, he made great contributions to the promotion of young talent by developing a system for the systematic screening and training of talented young people; The entire “Generation Platini ” emerged from this institutionalized player promotion organized in cooperation with the professional clubs, whose training camp Guérin personally directed. Until the 1986 World Cup , the Breton was a member of the DTN and always one of the French delegations at international matches.

He then retired in Saint-Coulomb near Rennes, where he died at the age of 73. The performance center of the Breton football association LBF in Ploufragan near Saint-Brieuc now bears the name of Henri Guérin.

Stations

• 1955 to 1961: Stade Rennes (player-coach)
• 1961 to 1962: AS Saint-Étienne
• 1962 to 1966: France coach

literature

• Georges Cadiou: Les grands noms du football breton. Alan Sutton, Saint-Cyr-sur-Loire 2006 ISBN 2-84910-424-8
• Denis Chaumier: Les Bleus. Tous les joueurs de L'Équipe de France de 1904 à nos jours. Larousse, o. O. 2004 ISBN 2-03-505420-6
• Pierre Delaunay / Jacques de Ryswick / Jean Cornu: 100 ans de football en France. Atlas, Paris 1982, 1983² ISBN 2-7312-0108-8
• L'Équipe / Gérard Ejnès: La belle histoire. L'Équipe de France de football. L'Équipe, Issy-les-Moulineaux 2004 ISBN 2-951-96053-0

Remarks

1. ↑ ^{a b} Cadiou, p. 230
2. ↑ Chaumier, p. 148
3. ↑ Data from Stéphane Boisson / Raoul Vian: Il était une fois le Championnat de France de Football. Tous les joueurs de la première division de 1948/49 à 2003/04. Neofoot, Saint-Thibault o. J.
4. ↑ Delaunay / de Ryswick / Cornu, p. 258
5. ↑ Cadiou, p. 231; Chaumier, p. 148; L'Équipe / Ejnès, p. 115
6. ↑ L'Équipe of July 22, 1966, facsimile in L'Équipe / Ejnès, p. 117
7. ↑ Cadiou, p. 232

Web links

• Data sheet with photo on the FFF website