Jean Nicolas

Jean Nicolas (born June 9, 1913 in Nanterre , † September 8, 1978 in Nalliers (Vendée) ) was a French football player .

The club career

Jean Nicolas (left) in national dress next to Roger Rio (1934)

Jean Nicolas played for FC Rouen when he was young and he stayed with the club until the end of his career. The center forward was a powerful storm tank that often presented the opposing goalkeeper with unsolvable tasks in the 1930s . That is why he was appointed to the national team at the age of 19 , when his team was still playing second class . The rise in the Division 1 succeeded Rouen until 1936, and its 119 goals in the promotion season - one spoke in France reverently of the "bomb storm" (attaque mitrailleuse) to the opposite Nicolas and Roger Rio , Marceau Lhermine and Austrian Karl Durspekt included - he had scored 45 on his own and was also the top scorer in Division 2 in the previous two seasons ( 1933/34 with 54, 1934/35 with “only” 30 goals). In the following three seasons until the outbreak of war , the newcomer landed consistently at the top of the league table of the upper house of football, and the striker proved his dangerousness there too: in 1937 he was the third best league scorer with 27 goals, in 1938 he even won the top scorer with 26 goals . This season, with seven goals in a single point game, he also set the record in France's highest professional league, which has been unsurpassed until now, something that only André Abegglen had achieved before him . The "Red Devils" (Diables rouges) from Rouen had one of the most dangerous offensive series in French football of these years, especially due to the Nicolas / Rio tandem. Jean Nicolas could not win a title with Rouen, however, neither in the championship nor in the cup .

The German attack on France in 1940 interrupted many athletic careers - for Nicolas it even meant the end of his career. After the war, he settled in Brittany , where he coached the local amateur team of Saint-Pol-de-Léon .

The national player

Between February 1933 and December 1938 Jean Nicolas played 25 international matches for the Équipe Tricolore and scored 21 goals, although he had a serious competitor for the place in the center of the storm with Roger Courtois from FC Sochaux, a player-type related, serious competitor. He once led the French national team onto the field as team captain. He made his debut in a 4-0 draw against the Austrian "miracle team" , against which he could not win later (1934, 1937, 1938), regardless of his enforcement skills, as he did against Germany (1933, 1935, 1937) or Switzerland (1934).

In the 1934 FIFA World Cup , he was also in the French squad as in the 1938 World Cup in their own country , and he also scored in these tournaments half of the gate of his Bleus .

Palmarès

• French champion : Nothing
• French cup winner : Nothing (but semi-finalist 1937, 1940)
• 25 senior internationals (21 goals); World Cup participants 1934 (1 game, 1 goal) and 1938 (2 games, 2 goals)
• Division 1 top scorer : 1938; French record holder with the most goals in a league game (7 hits, 1937/38)