Ivan Bek

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Ivan "Ivica" Bek (born October 29, 1909 in Belgrade , † June 2, 1963 in Sète , Département Hérault ) was a Yugoslav and French football player .

The club career

Born in Belgrade as the son of a German and a Czech woman, Bek joined the BSK Belgrade at the age of 16 . After a short time, Bek was part of the first team and was mainly used as a center forward or half right. In 1927 he was promoted to the first division with BSK, but a few months later, after 51 goals in 50 games, Bek moved to Šabac and joined the Mačva Šabac .

At the end of 1928, Bek then moved to the southern French club FC Sète . In his first season he reached the cup final with the green-whites , which however was lost 2-0 to Sports Olympiques Montpelliérains . A year later he was again in the final of the French Cup , and after the 3-1 nV against RC Paris he was able to book his first title. He had made a major contribution to this success: he scored the two goals in overtime. After temporary trips to Stade Raphaëlois and Urania Geneva in 1931, he returned to FC Sète with the introduction of professional football in the summer of 1932. With the introduction of professional Division 1 , he was allowed to officially shoot his goals against payment and was the best scorer in his team in the first league season.

In 1933, Bek took French citizenship, which led to his renaming himself to Yvan Beck . In 1934 he, who had meanwhile also become team captain, had his most successful year at club level. With Sète he won both the national championship and the cup in the 1933/34 season and was part of the first team to win the doublé in France . He harmonized well with Sète's new striker István Lukács and even made it to 10th place on the French top scorer list in the championship itself. A year later he surprisingly moved to the second division AS Saint-Étienne . Twice he missed promotion with the Verts as third in the table, only to return to the first division in 1938. By then he had scored 91 goals in the three second division seasons and was even the sixth best goalscorer in Division 2 in 1936 . In the last season before the outbreak of World War II, he finished fourth in Division 1 with Saint-Étienne, but met only five times.

During the occupation and division of France , he played for Olympique Nîmes from 1940 to 1942 and took part in the regional Zone Sud championship. Beck, drafted as a soldier at the beginning of the war, joined the French resistance movement during the German occupation of France ; as "Capitaine Tito" he was instrumental in the liberation of the region around Sisteron . A guest appearance at AS Aix followed ; then he ended his career.

After the war, Ivan Bek lived far from the headlines and in extraordinarily modest circumstances as a dock worker in Sète; The president of the local FC even organized a fundraising campaign in the early 1950s to help his long-time player financially. In 1963 Beck died of heart failure at the age of 53.

Stations

  • BSK Belgrade (1925–1928)
  • FK Mačva Šabac (1928)
  • FC Sète (1928-1931)
  • Stade Raphaëlois (1931)
  • Urania Geneva (1931-1932)
  • FC Sète (1932-1935)
  • AS Saint-Étienne (1935–1939, in D2 until 1938)
  • Olympique Nîmes (1940-1942)
  • AS Aix

The national player

Bek was appointed to the Yugoslav national team for the first time on May 15, 1927 for a game against Bulgaria (2-0) . His second international match was at the 1928 Olympic tournament in Amsterdam in the first round against Portugal (1: 2). After moving to France, he was only brought back to the Yugoslav team for the 1930 World Cup . At the first World Cup in Uruguay, Bek helped the Yugoslav team to the semi-finals with his three goals (one in a 2-1 win against Brazil, two in a 4-0 win against Bolivia), where they were defeated by the eventual world champions Uruguay . Bek and Ljubiša Stefanović and Branislav Sekulić , who also played in France, were the first " legionnaires " to be used at the World Cup finals. For his seventh and last appearance he came in 1931 against Poland, where he also scored his fourth international goal.

After Bek had taken French citizenship in 1933, he was appointed to the Équipe Tricolore for the first time in February 1935 . In total, he completed five games for the French national team by October 1937, but remained goalless and could therefore not recommend himself for further tasks. During this time Ivan Bek cultivated a characteristic quirk : if he was badly annoyed about something on the field, he used to pull down his sports pants.

successes

Remarks

  1. ↑ Yves Dupont: La Mecque du football or Mémoires d'un Dauphin. Self-published, Sète 1973, pp. 137f.
personal data
SURNAME Bek, Ivan
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Bek, Ivica; Beck, Yvan
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Yugoslav and French soccer players
DATE OF BIRTH October 29, 1909
PLACE OF BIRTH Belgrade
DATE OF DEATH June 2, 1963
Place of death Sète , France