Louis Mesnier

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Louis Mesnier ( 1884 - October 10, 1921 ) was a French football player . He was one of the national "stars" of the time before the First World War .

Club career

Louis Mesnier, a winger who grew up in the Paris region and started his career as a defensive player - in the very early " game systems " there were usually only two defensive positions in addition to the goalkeeper and eight attackers - had a good feel for the ball that enabled him to make precise crosses , and was characterized by its gunshot power. For 21 years he only played for one club, which was initially called the Football Club de Paris and from 1906 CA Paris , and was extremely versatile. Mesnier was also a national player at FC (see below) . The club initially belonged to the Union des sociétés françaises de sports athlétiques (USFSA), the largest of the competing football associations . As champions of the Paris League, CAP played twice for the USFSA national championship, the Championnat de France ; Mesnier's team failed in 1906 (1: 4 against Racing Roubaix ) and 1909 (2: 3 against Stade Helvétique Marseille ) in the final.

After CAP had switched from USFSA to the small Ligue de Football Association (LFA) in 1910 , the club, and with him Louis Mesnier, was twice association champion and then also winners of the Trophée de France , the inter-association championship organized by the Comité de Football Interfédéral . In 1911 the team defeated Étoile des Deux Lacs 1-0 in the final , two years later they prevailed in the decisive game in front of around 3,000 spectators in Bordeaux 2-1 against the home team of VGA du Médoc . However, since the introduction of professionalism in France (1932), these titles are no longer official national championships. Mesnier was also a member of the LFA national team, for which he played numerous international friendly matches.

With regard to wartime, the printed literature on Louis Mesnier shows a complete void. He was neither in 1917 nor in 1918 in the selection team of the LFA, which won the Trophée de France instead of club teams, and not in the CFI national team - the Comité Français Interfédéral was the umbrella organization of the French individual associations until the foundation of the FFFA - in their ( unofficial) international matches from 1915 to 1919. In terms of age, it can be assumed that, like so many others, he served in the army; but this is just as much a plausible assumption as the construction of a connection between war-related injury and his very early, surprising death. In between, the player made the sporting headlines again when he succeeded in the French Cup . In 1918/19 he was eliminated in the quarter-finals with CA Paris (1: 2 against Olympique Paris ), but a year later he even won his only official title: The 35-year-old "veteran" was back on the left side of defense as at the beginning of his career, as his team in the 1919/20 season after previous successes a. a. the Coupe de France won against local rivals Red Star AC and VGA Médoc Bordeaux with a 2-1 final win over Le Havre AC . Less than a year and a half later, Louis Mesnier's life ended.

Stations

  • FC Paris (1900–1906)
  • Cercle Athlétique Paris (1906–1920 or 1921)

In the national team

Between May 1904 and January 1913, Louis Mesnier played 14 international matches for France and scored six goals; in four of these encounters in 1911 he was also team captain. His national team debut on May 1, 1904 against Belgium (3: 3) was also the first official French international match, making him one of the earliest eleven internationals in the country. In the 12th minute of the game - exactly at 5:07 p.m. - Mesnier scored the goal to equalize 1-1. This first goal in the history of the Équipe tricolore characterized L'Équipe predecessor L'Auto the day after as "one of his typical cracking shots". His employer did not give him time off for this game, but he still got on the train to Brussels late on Saturday evening . Therefore, as a precaution, L'Auto called him “Didi” in its reporting (and Fernand Canelle , who had the same problem, “Fernand”). Both were already part of the national selection in their " original international matches "; Mesnier, who played three of them and also played for the USFSA selection in 1909, had already scored a goal on his debut in March 1903 (4:11 against Corinthian FC ) before GO Smith on the British side, with a total of nine goals, scored the temporary French Leadership still turned around.

Mesnier was in the first four official internationals (1904-1906) in the team, then completed his fifth match two years later. This was followed by a three-year hiatus associated with the exclusion of the USFSA from the world association and the takeover of French membership by the Comité Français Interfédéral (mid-1909). From March 1911, the attacker then played the next nine matches between the French in a row and, based on his experience, was one of the strongest players. Overall, he has made five international matches against Belgium, three each against Italy and Switzerland and one each against the Netherlands , the English amateur team and Luxembourg . Against the latter, he scored two goals for a 4-1 victory, and he also contributed one goal to the earliest "highlight" in French international match history, the 4-3 win in Turin against Italy (March 1912). In 1905 against the Confederates, "Didi" also stood out for his costume: because the USFSA officials did not have eleven black knickerbockers with them, the striker wore long white underpants with the then still white jersey.

Palmarès

  • French champions: official national championships have only existed in France since 1932/33
  • National champion of the USFSA Championnat de France : Nothing but a finalist in 1906 and 1909
  • Winner of the Trophée de France des CFI: 1911, 1913
  • French cup winner: 1920
  • 14 international matches (6 goals) for France; first goalscorer in French international history

literature

  • Pierre Cazal: France (1900-1920). in: International Federation of Football History and Statistics (ed.), Football World Magazine No. 23, 1994
  • 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 2-9519605-3-0
  • L'Équipe / Gérard Ejnès: Coupe de France. La folle épopée. L'Équipe, Issy-les-Moulineaux 2007 ISBN 978-2-915535-62-4
  • Alfred Wahl: Les archives du football. Sport et société en France (1880-1980). Gallimard, o. O. 1989 ISBN 2-07-071603-1

Remarks

  1. ↑ Delaunay / de Ryswick / Cornu, p. 42, refer to him as one of only eight Étoiles du début du siècle , albeit under the incorrect first name Victor . Cazal, pp. 10/11, lists him among the eleven players of the first two decades of the 20th century, whose biography he describes in more detail.
  2. ↑ Wahl, p. 68ff. and 144ff.
  3. ↑ Chaumier, p. 214
  4. ↑ Cazal, p. 11, therefore calls him the "most modern player of his era"
  5. ↑ see the respective final round tables and lists at Cazal, pp. 18–21, also available here or here on the web
  6. ↑ Wahl, p. 129f.
  7. ↑ see the final round results / line-ups at Cazal, p. 32/33 (on the web also here and here )
  8. ↑ Delaunay / de Ryswick / Cornu, p. 57
  9. ↑ Team line- ups for both finals and the aforementioned international matches in Cazal, p. 6f. or 13/14
  10. ↑ Cazal, p. 11
  11. ↑ Team line-ups at Cazal, p. 38
  12. ↑ Age information from L'Équipe / Ejnès, Coupe, p. 81, title from Delaunay / de Ryswick / Cornu, p. 88
  13. ↑ L'Équipe / Ejnès, Coupe, p. 336
  14. ↑ L'Équipe / Ejnès, Belle histoire, p. 375
  15. ↑ L'Équipe / Ejnès, Belle histoire, p. 13
  16. ↑ L'Équipe / Ejnès, Belle histoire, p. 12
  17. ↑ Cazal, pp. 2 and 11
  18. ↑ Cazal, p. 4
  19. ↑ L'Équipe / Ejnès, Belle histoire, pp. 290-293.
  20. ↑ L'Équipe / Ejnès, Belle histoire, p. 20
  21. ↑ Chaumier, p. 214; a photo with Mesnier in front of the Swiss Gate can be found in Delaunay / de Ryswick / Cornu, p. 40

Web links

personal data
SURNAME Mesnier, Louis
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Didi
BRIEF DESCRIPTION French soccer player
DATE OF BIRTH 1884
DATE OF DEATH October 10, 1921