Joseph Gonzales (soccer player)

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Gonzales (7th from left / 6th from right) in 1934 with SC Fives

Joseph Gonzales (born February 19, 1907 in Béni Saf , † June 26, 1984 in Aubagne ) was a French football player and coach .

Club career

Time as an amateur (until 1933)

The 178 centimeter tall defender Gonzales grew up in the town of Béni Saf on the Mediterranean coast of French-occupied Algeria and began playing football for a local club in 1921. In 1926 he went to neighboring Morocco , which was also under French rule, and played for a club from Oujda near the Algerian border. In 1931 he went to the far north of mainland France, where he played at the UA Valenciennes-Anzin . With the team he missed the qualification for Division 1 , which was created in 1932 as the first league in the country and founded professional football in France. Although in 1933 they moved into Division 2 , which opened a year after the first division , which also offered professional football as the second division, Gonzales received an offer from the neighboring first division club SC Fives and after two years at Valenciennes decided to move there.

Professional career before the war (1933–1939)

Gonzales, who was already 26 years old when he switched to professional football in the summer of 1933, immediately became a regular at Fives and was thus part of the core of a team that came second in the table in 1934. He remained an integral part of the Northern French team before he was lured away in 1936 by league rivals Olympique Marseille , who are based in the south of the country . After he was initially seeded in the first eleven, he fell out for a longer period in the first half of 1937 and was therefore only involved in winning the championship in 1937, which was the first title win of his career, with only ten games played. He then fought for a regular place again and made it to the national cup final in 1938 with Marseille . In this he ran on from the start and won the trophy with a 2-1 win against FC Metz .

War years and coaching career (from 1939)

The beginning of the Second World War brought the cessation of regular game operations in 1939 and forced many players to interrupt or end their careers because they were drafted into the military. Gonzales, however, was able to continue playing and took part with Marseille in the unofficial hosting of the championship. In the cup, the team was in the final of 1940 , but the defender failed with a 2-1 defeat by Racing Paris on a possible second win of the title. From 1942 on, he also held the post of coach at Olympique in parallel to his playing career. In this role as player-coach he reached the qualification for the cup final in 1943 and won the title for the second time with a 4-0 win against Girondins Bordeaux in the third attempt.

In the same year, the regular clubs were replaced by so-called Équipes fédérales , with Gonzales belonging to the ÉF Marseille-Provence and continued to perform his duties as a player and coach. In 1944 he was able to return to Olympique Marseille through the reintroduction of the club teams. In January 1945 he gave up the coaching post, but retained his role as a regular player. For the season 1945/46, which brought the reintroduction of regular game operations with it, he was still in the squad at the age of 38, but did not get beyond two season assignments. After his last game on September 30, 1945, in which he had to witness a 6-0 defeat against FC Rouen , he ended his professional career after 150 first division games with two goals and 73 other unofficial first division games with one goal. In 1948 he returned to Algeria, where he and his brother ran a café in Ain Temouchent and also coached a local club. He later lived in the south of France and died there in 1984.

National team

The player was appointed to the French squad for the 1934 World Cup , but was not used during the tournament. He made his debut for the French national team on March 8, 1936, when the then 29-year-old was on the field in a 3-0 win against Belgium. The encounter also remained his only mission in his country's jersey.

Individual evidence

  1. Grandes Equipes SC Fivois , pari-et-gagne.com
  2. Joseph Gonzáles complete profile ( memento from November 28, 2013 in the web archive archive.today ), soccerdatabase.eu
  3. ^ Joseph Gonzales - Fiche de stats du joueur de football , pari-et-gagne.com
  4. Joseph Gonzales , omstatsclub.com
  5. Joueur - Joseph GONZALES , fff.fr