Jean Snella

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Jean Snella (born December 9, 1914 in Mengede , † November 20, 1979 in Metz ) was a French football player and successful coach .

The player

Born in Poland during the first winter of the war in Mengede, which was still independent at the time, Jean Snella grew up in northern France ; At 14 he began an apprenticeship in the Dourges mine , then worked as a mechanic for the Arras public transport company . During his military service he was three times French football military champion and began parallel to this (1934) his civil playing career at Lille Olympique , which was runner-up in Division 1 in 1935/36 . In 1938 he moved to AS Saint-Étienne , the club whose heyday he was to help shape. In December 1938 he, who had already played a B international match, was nominated for the A national team against Italy, but declined the appeal because he did not feel at his best. Snella's reluctance and unpretentiousness, which became evident in this, remained outstanding character traits during the following decades of his work.

The Second World War brutally affected Snella's life: he fought against the German Wehrmacht during the western campaign in Belgium and northern France , was taken prisoner at Évreux in early June 1940 and disappeared in a POW camp, from which he escaped in 1942. In 1945/46 he laced his football boots again for Saint-Étienne, but at the same time took training lessons at his own expense. The surgical removal of two menisci ended his playing career in 1946.

Stations

  • 1934 to 1938: Lille Olympique
  • 1938 to 1940: AS Saint-Étienne
  • 1945 to 1946: AS Saint-Étienne

The trainer

1946 to 1959

Jean Snella initially coached FC Lorient from the d'honneur division , to which he was accompanied by the previous season's player discovery, Antoine Cuissard , and from 1948 the amateur eleven of "his" AS Saint-Étienne . 1950 it was Pierre Guichard , the legendary president of the Greens (the name of Saint-Etienne almost everywhere in France), appoint as coach of Erstligamannschaft - but Jean Snella refused because he was not a "traitor" to "incumbent" Ignace Tax would be . It wasn't until the club dismissed Tax that his long-time teammate, the ASSE talent scout Pierre Garonnaire, persuaded him to accept the coaching position - and then Snella stayed with this club until 1959, which was consistently in the upper half of the table in Division 1 and which Snella was able to help to his very first championship title in the 1956/57 season .

The following year, the French Football Association appointed him, who had already been responsible for the French B-Elf from 1955, to the coaching staff for the 1958 World Cup , where he played a central role not only on the sidelines under coach Albert Batteux : Jean Snella had, as in the club, here too he was always open to the players, with whom he often had a rather untypical personal relationship at the time. He was never too smart to pick up the shirts in the locker room, inflate balls or change screw studs. Above all, he had long since earned a good professional reputation, and the interplay of all these factors brought the Équipe Tricolore third place, their best placement at a World Cup to date. Richard Tylinski from the 1957 championship team later described Snella as "father, brother and professional".

1959 to 1967

At the end of the 1958/59 season, Snella moved to Lake Geneva for personal reasons , where he also won two Swiss championship titles as coach of Servette FC Genève . In 1963, the new club president Roger Rocher brought him back to AS Saint-Étienne , and Snella not only promptly helped the newcomer to the second French championship (1964), but he built a team of young talents who dominated French football for the next decade and a half just like before only Stade de Reims : the game of Hervé Revelli , Aimé Jacquet , Bernard Bosquier , Robert Herbin and others bore Snella's signature.

After so disappointing verlaufenen for France World Cup in England , the FFF appointed him in September 1966, together with the other successful club coach in the 1960s, José Arribas ( FC Nantes ), succeeding Henri Guérin to coach . Snella had agreed to hold this office temporarily because he wanted to concentrate his strength on his verts ; therefore this interlude ended after two victories and two defeats in November of the same year.

1967 to 1979

With the third championship title at the end of this 1966/67 season, the ways of ASSE and Snella parted, whose successor Albert Batteux followed the championship number 3 in series with titles 4 to 6. Snella trained again Servette until 1971 , where he was still a cup winner in his last year, and then OGC Nice until 1974 , which he brought to runner-up in 1973. An engagement with the Algerian club NA Hussein Dey followed. At the end of his long and successful career he was still working for FC Metz ; Snella died of cancer in the middle of the 1979/80 season.

In 1972 he was voted Coach of the Year . In Saint-Étienne they erected a double monument to the player and coach Jean Snella: a main street and the south stand of the Stade Geoffroy-Guichard now bear his name.

Stations

  • FC Lorient (1946-1948)
  • AS Saint-Étienne (1948–1950 the amateur team, 1950–1959 the professionals)
  • Assistant coach of the Equipe Tricolore at the 1958 World Cup
  • Servette Genève (1959–1963)
  • AS Saint-Étienne (1963-1967)
  • National coach of France (September to November 1966)
  • Servette Genève (1967–1971)
  • OGC Nice (1971–1974)
  • Nasr Athlétique de Hussein Dey (Algeria, at least 1977/78)
  • FC Metz (1979)

Palmarès (as coach)

Remarks

  1. ↑ Archive link ( Memento of the original from May 1, 2008 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was automatically inserted and not yet checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. ; a photo of Snella's training with Hussein Dey's team from January 1978 can be found in Paul Dietschy / David-Claude Kemo-Keimbou (co-publisher: FIFA): Le football et l'Afrique. EPA, o. O. 2008 ISBN 978-2-85120-674-9 , pp. 192/193  @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.nasria.com
personal data
SURNAME Snella, Jean
BRIEF DESCRIPTION French soccer player and coach
DATE OF BIRTH December 9, 1914
PLACE OF BIRTH Mengede , Germany
DATE OF DEATH November 20, 1979
Place of death Metz , France