Lucien Muller

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Lucien Muller

Lucien Muller (born September 3, 1934 in Bischwiller / Département Bas-Rhin ) is a former French football player and coach .

The player

The club career

"Little Kopa"

In many respects there are striking parallels between the career of the Alsatian and that of the great Raymond Kopa : like him, the technically gifted Lucien Muller began his career as a dangerous winger and later shaped the game of his respective teams as a runner or half- forward . Like Kopa, he moved from an amateur club (in the case of Mullers, the local FC Bischwiller , from which "Willy" Lieb or Oscar Heisserer had emerged) initially to a professional club ( Racing Strasbourg ) that was not particularly outstanding at that time , before joining the The 1950s not only came to France's dominant Stade de Reims ; like Kopa, Muller became a national player there and then signed by Real Madrid . Finally, after their years in Spain, they both returned to Stade de Reims. So it is hardly surprising that Muller was occasionally referred to as le petit Kopa - especially since "the big and the little Kopa" played together in one team for three years.

Muller on Europe's great teams

When Strasbourg was relegated to the second division at the end of the 1956/57 season, Muller joined Toulouse FC , where only midfield positions in Division 1 jumped out. In the early summer of 1959, Stade de Reims, which had just lost a European Cup final to Real Madrid for the second time in four years, surprised the public with the news that, in addition to Kopa , who returned from Madrid, they had also signed Lucien Muller.

The first season together (1959/60) ended promptly with Muller's first national championship title . In this environment, peppered with national players (all eleven regular players were or were appointed to the Equipe Tricolore ), a coach ( Albert Batteux , also national coach), who gave his players free rein and still had tactically formed the team into a unit, and a storm that scored 109 goals in 38 league games, Muller's qualities as a pass-giver and goalscorer came into their own for the first time. In the end he was with 13 goals in the team's internal striker scoring "only" fifth (behind Fontaine , Piantoni , Vincent and the "real Kopa" ), but its commitment had paid off for him and for the club already. At the beginning of the season, Lucien Muller also played for the national team for the first time.

From 1960/1961 Muller continued to play withdrawn as an outside runner; that year Reims was only third in the league, but at the end of the 1961/62 season the Alsatian won his second national championship title in Champagne . He then followed in the footsteps of his great role model and played for Real Madrid ; Alfredo Di Stéfano himself had spoken to Muller in December 1961 at the banquet after the international match between France and Spain about the club change. With the "Royal" he was three times Spanish champion in the following three years and was in the 1964 final of the European Cup, which was lost 1: 3 against Inter Milan - Di Stéfano, Puskás , Gento and Santamaría , with whom Kopa had already played , had passed their zenith by this point, the younger players like Amancio and Muller could not fully make up for that. Lucien Muller moved to FC Barcelona in 1965 , stayed there for three years, won the national cup and UEFA Cup with the Catalans and returned to Reims in 1968. He was not too bad for the club, where his promotion began, to throw all his skills into the scales in the second division and to complete 65 games (5 goals). When he resigned in the summer of 1970, he had contributed to Stade de Reims becoming first class again.

Stations

  • FC Bischwiller (until 1953)
  • RC Strasbourg (1953–1957)
  • Toulouse FC (1957-1959)
  • Stade de Reims (1959–1962)
  • Real Madrid (1962-1965)
  • FC Barcelona (1965–1968)
  • Stade de Reims (1968–1970, in Division 2 )

The national player

Between October 1959 and April 1964, Lucien Muller played 16 games for the French national football team (14 in his time at Reims, two at Madrid) and scored three goals. In 1960 he also took part in the final round of the European Championship in his own country , which was disappointing for the Equipe Tricolore (one use). After a two-year break in which he was no longer considered as a "foreign professional", he was in France's squad for the 1966 World Cup . But although the French there urgently needed a game designer like Muller, national coach Henri Guérin let him stew on the bench for the entire preliminary round - and then les Bleus had to travel home early; shortly afterwards Lucien Muller declared that he was no longer available for the national team.

The trainer

From the 1970s onwards , Muller coached several clubs in Spain's top division, including FC Barcelona . In 1983 he led the RCD Mallorca into the Primera División . From 1983 to 1986 he was head coach at AS Monaco ; In this role he succeeded in what he was unable to do as a player: in 1985 he and the team from the Principality won the French Cup . After retiring into private life, he advised the people of Monaco for years and made them aware of young talent. The coaching activity has remained one of the few aspects in which the "small" and the "large Kopa" differ.

Stations

  • Club Deportivo Castellón (1970–1974)
  • Burgos Club de Fútbol (1975/76)
  • Real Saragossa (1976/77)
  • Burgos Club de Fútbol (1977/78)
  • Fútbol Club Barcelona (1978/79)
  • Burgos Club de Fútbol (1979–1981)
  • Real Club Deportivo Mallorca (1981-1983)
  • Association Sportive de Monaco FC (1983–1986)
  • Real Club Deportivo Mallorca (1987/88)
  • Club Deportivo Castellón (1990-1992)

Palmarès

As a player

As a trainer

literature

  • Jean Cornu: Les grandes equipes françaises de football. Famot, Genève 1978
  • Pascal Grégoire-Boutreau / Tony Verbicaro: Stade de Reims - une histoire sans fin. Cahiers intempestifs, Saint-Étienne 2001 ISBN 2-911698-21-5
  • Michel Hubert / Jacques Pernet: Stade de Reims. Sa legend. Atelier Graphique, Reims 1992 ISBN 2-9506272-2-6
  • L'Équipe (ed.): Stade de Reims. Un club à la Une. L'Équipe, Issy-les-Moulineaux 2006 ISBN 2-915535-41-8
  • Lucien Perpère / Victor Sinet / Louis Tanguy: Reims de nos amours. 1931/1981 - 50 ans de Stade de Reims. Alphabet Cube, Reims 1981
  • Jacques and Thomas Poncelet: Supporters du Stade de Reims 1935-2005. Self-published, Reims 2005 ISBN 2-9525704-0-X
personal data
SURNAME Muller, Lucien
BRIEF DESCRIPTION French soccer player
DATE OF BIRTH September 3, 1934
PLACE OF BIRTH Bischwiller