Marceau Somerlinck

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Marceau Somerlinck (born January 4, 1922 in Lille , † November 9, 2005 ) was a French football player . Despite his numerous successes, his family name is often spelled incorrectly (Sommerlinck or -lynck).

The player career

Marceau Somerlinck joined the suburban club SC Fivois in Liller at the age of 12 . The rather short full-back was a typical representative of northern French football at the time: not a great technician, but a vicious, never-giving fighter who did not leave his opponent's side in his own half of the game and who pushed the ball out of the danger zone with powerful blows. He made his debut very early, probably at the age of 16, in the first team, which was to be found on a midfield position in Division 1 until the outbreak of war . As a 19-year-old he was in his first national cup final with Fives , but left the stadium as a loser in 1941. In a league game, however, the club was only allowed to participate again in 1942/43 as a result of the occupation of France by the German Wehrmacht - Lille was in the "forbidden zone" - and the team immediately took third place in the northern group. The following year, instead of the club teams, regional selection teams played for titles and cups, and Somerlinck was runner-up with the Équipe fédérale Lille-Flandres .

In the 1944/45 season, Fives merged with local rivals Olympique Lillois to form Lille Olympique SC , and here the left defender, like his defensive colleague Joseph Jadrejak , who also came from Fives, was an integral part of a team that was rushing from success to success from the start. Their showpiece was the attacking duo Bihel / Baratte , and the attacking game often meant hard work for their own defenders. In the first post-war season (1945/46), which was again played in a national league and under professional conditions, the LOSC won the cup and the French championship , including the doublé . Lille was able to defend the trophy in both 1947 and 1948, and Somerlinck stood on the lawn of the Stade Olympique Yves-du-Manoir in all finals , defending his place against young talents like Jacques Grimonpon . In Division 1 things did not go quite so well: Lille was only runner-up four times in a row (1948-1951), but the club never did worse than fourth place since 1945, before another national championship title could be won in 1954. In 1953 and 1955 two more wins of the national cup were added. In 1951 Somerlinck was also in the final for the Coupe Latine , where Lille then had to bow to AC Milan .
After winning the title in 1954, the dominance of the LOSC in Division 1 ended abruptly: In 1955 the club could only hold on to victories in the relegation games in the upper house, in 1956 Lille had to go back to the barrages . Somerlinck, who had actually already ended his active career after winning the Cup in 1955, even returned to the red-whites for a few encounters in the 1955/56 season, but that no longer prevented him from going into the second division.

Marceau Somerlinck was seldom absent due to an injury in this decade, despite his physical style of play, and had a total of over 300 first division matches after the end of the war. But above all: no footballer has won more French Cup victories than this reliable defender - and it might even have been two more had he not had to pass the cup finals in 1945 and 1949. Some say that Lille might not have lost these finals (both times against Racing Paris , by the way ) if Somerlinck had played.

Despite his consistent performance, he was not granted a call to the senior national team .

Player stations

  • SC Fivois (1934-1943)
  • Équipe fédérale Lille-Flandres (1943/44)
  • Lille Olympique SC (1944-1956)

Life after the active time

For a few years Marceau Somerlinck coached an amateur club from Ronchin , the town on the southern outskirts of Lille, where he lived and ran a bar and tabac - and where a sports hall now bears his name.

Palmarès

literature

  • Paul Hurseau / Jacques Verhaeghe, Les immortels du football nordiste , Alan Sutton Saint-Cyr-sur-Loire 2003 ISBN 2-84253-867-6
personal data
SURNAME Somerlinck, Marceau
BRIEF DESCRIPTION French soccer player
DATE OF BIRTH January 4, 1922
PLACE OF BIRTH Lille
DATE OF DEATH November 9, 2005