Mario Zatelli

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Mario Zatelli (1943)

Mario Zatelli (born December 21, 1912 in Sétif , Algeria , † January 7, 2004 in Sainte-Maxime , Var department ) was a French football player and coach . Over a period of four decades, he won a total of ten national titles in both functions, plus two as sports director, and played internationally for both Morocco and France. Although he had been under contract with numerous clubs, his name is still associated with Olympique Marseille (often abbreviated to OM), for whom he worked for many years. To this day (as of December 2012) he is the coach who was responsible for the Marseille team during the largest number of competitive games.

Player career

In his clubs

Clubs as players from ... to
Union Sportive Marocaine de Casablanca 1929-1935
Olympique de Marseille 1935-1938
Racing Club de Paris 1938-1940
Toulouse Football Club 1940-1943
Équipe Fédérale Marseille-Provence 1943/44
Olympique de Marseille 1945-1948
Union Sportive de Saint-André-les-Alpes
(as player-coach in the Division d'Honneur ,
the top amateur division at the time) 		1948-1950
Sporting Club de Draguignan
(as player-coach in the DH ) 		1950/51

Born in Algeria as the son of Italian immigrants and raised in Morocco , the center forward joined a club from the Catholic sports movement (patronage) in Casablanca at the age of 12 . His adult career began in 1929 in French-ruled North Africa with the US Marocaine Casablanca ; from 1932 to 1934 he won the North African football championship three times in a row with this team and was in the cup final with the USM in these three years . Mario Zatelli was a goal-scoring "penalty area striker" with a hard shot and a spectacular volley , but also had a good eye for the better positioned teammate. Just Fontaine , who also played for USM many years later, described Zatelli as one of his early role models. In 1935, he came on the recommendation of the association always players from the Maghreb proposing pieds noirs to Erstdivisionär Olympique Marseille, who was already since the 1920s as a "branch of Algeria". This transfer even occupied the French police for a short time : Olympique conducted the contract negotiations with Zatelli and Georges Janin , another Frenchman from Algeria, by telegram; in it, the club and the players used the code names "Lisette" and "Jeanette" in order to prevent the competition from finding out about the intended engagements. As the amount of bonus payments was being negotiated for a long time in the busy telegram traffic between Marseille and North Africa, the gendarmerie suspected that a trafficking in women was being prepared and investigated accordingly.

Zatelli finally received 50,000 francs in earnest for signing the contract  ; his starting salary was a good 1,500 FF a month - roughly double the wage of a worker - plus success bonuses. He also worked as a bank clerk. With Marseille, Zatelli won the championship title under coach Eisenhoffer in 1937 and was runner-up in 1938 and, after a 2-1 final victory over FC Metz , cup winner . In this final he was on the pitch despite a bad flu. His teammates in the three seasons included Alcazar , Aznar , Ben Bouali , Kohut , Weiskopf and goalkeepers Di Lorto and “Jaguar” Vasconcelos .

Zatelli himself always placed among the top ten league shooters at Olympique : in 1935/36 9th place with 15 hits, 1936/37 second (28) and 1937/38 seventh (20). “The beautiful Mario”, as he was quickly called because of his gentle look, the always undulating hairstyle and the relaxed attitude to life outside of the stadiums, remained a “passionate and humble person” throughout his life.

In 1938 Zatelli moved for a transfer fee of 380,000 FF - at that time a league record - to Racing Paris , with whom he finished third in Division 1 and won his second Coupe de France ; due to injury, he was only able to play 14 of the 30 point games and also not be used in the cup final. In the first season of the "War Championships" (1939/40) Racing only played nine league games, but was again cup winners. Zatelli was not part of the team in this final either and it is not certain whether he was ever used.

After the outbreak of war and the occupation of France, he returned to the south of the country and scored his goals there until 1943 for Toulouse FC , which was joined by other national players in the form of Dupuis , Diagne and Keller - and in particular Jean Bastien , who had already been to Marseille and Paris Zatellis Had been a teammate. Here, too, he was successful and was 1941 cup winner in the unoccupied part of France ; he scored the goal of the day in the final against AS Saint-Étienne  - but then the TFC failed on the way to the national final because of the winner of the occupied zone, the Girondins AS du Port . In 1943 the championship followed in the southern season of the first division; however, both titles are only considered unofficial in France. Immediately afterwards back in Marseille , Mario Zatelli belonged to the Équipe Fédérale Marseille-Provence , which finished 9th in the championship with 15 other regional selections (instead of club teams) in a nationwide round of points; Zatelli only played 14 of the 30 games and scored two goals. All that is known about the 1944/45 season is that he did not play a game at Olympique; why this was so and whether he ran for another club cannot yet be determined.

From the summer of 1945 he was regularly attacked by Olympique Marseille, albeit only in a few encounters in 1947/48. This season the club finished first in the Division 1 table ; for Mario Zatelli it was his second official national championship title. He then ended his professional career, in which he had completed a total of 129 point games with 87 goals for OM, laced his football boots for the next three years at two amateur clubs as a player- coach and earned the coaching diploma in 1950; his exam topic was "The game of the center forward and his volley".

In the national team

Internationally, Zatelli had already played for Morocco during his time at USM Casablanca , at that time no official national team; Among other things, he was involved in the 4-1 win against France's B team. At the soccer World Cup in 1938 he was part of the French squad , but was not used there because the national team elector Barreau trusted Jean Nicolas in the position of striker - and after this tournament Désiré Koranyi . In January 1939, Mario Zatelli played his only A international match for the Bleus in a 4-0 win over Poland , where he also scored a goal.

Career as a trainer and sports director

Clubs as trainers
or sports directors		 from ... to
Union Sportive de Saint-André-les-Alpes
(as player-coach in the Division d'Honneur ,
the top amateur division at the time) 		1948-1950
Sporting Club de Draguignan
(as player-coach in the DH ) 		1950/51
Olympique Gymnaste Club de Nice
(1951/52 as sports director) 		1951-1953
Olympique d'Hussein-Dey (Algeria) 1953/54
Club Sportif La Voulte Valence 1954-1959
Football Club de Nancy
(1959/60 and 1963/64 in D2) 		1959-1964
Olympique de Marseille
(1964–1966 in D2;
January 1971 – March 1972 as sports director) 		1964–1966
Nov 1968-Dec
1970 Jan 1971-Mar
1972 Mar 1972-Sep 1973

In Nice and Nancy

Mario Zatelli, who looked after a number of clubs in France and Algeria in the 1950s, was also successful in his new role. At his first professional club, OGC Nice , he worked as a sports director in 1951/52 because coach Numa Andoire did not have a football instructor license; this year the team won the doublé (victory in the championship and cup during the same season) and lost 1-0 to FC Barcelona in the Coupe Latine final . In the following season he also took over the coaching position there, was only able to prevent relegation from Division 1 and did not make it through the quarter-finals in the cup. But he led after five years at an amateur club from Valence to FC Nancy in 1960 from the second in the top flight and reached there in 1962 Rank 4, it brought also up in the cup final (0: 1 against AS Saint-Etienne). In 1963, however, the Lothringers descended again and did not manage to rise again.

Back in Marseille

In the summer of 1964, Zatelli was in Brussels , where those in charge of the Daring Club made him an offer of contract when he received a call from Olympique Marseille to bring his former player back to the dugout. He left the Belgian capital immediately -  “It had rained continuously in Brussels; I would have even gone to Marseille as a coach of the school team. ”  - and let OM take it on, even though the traditional club was going through one of its darkest sporting and financial times. With a one-year break, he had only played in Division 2 since 1959. For example, he played in the home game against US Forbach in the Stade Vélodrome in front of only 434 paying spectators and was close to crashing into the amateur camp; at the end of this season Mario Zatelli was able to lead the team at least in 14th place (out of 16 participants). Before the start of the 1965/66 season , the coach named half a dozen players to be signed for the new president Marcel Leclerc - a mixture of talented and experienced players - so that he would not have to play against relegation again. The experiment succeeded, and at the end of the 1965/66 season, Zatelli had brought the new team back into the footballing upper house as a league runner-up behind Stade Reims . Nevertheless, he was then replaced by Robert Domergue - and didn't even take it offense because he “loved the city and the club far too much to pack his bags” . In the first half of the 1968/69 season he replaced Domergue again and crowned the season by winning the cup (in the final 2-0 against Girondins Bordeaux). Although he had led OM to runner-up in 1970 and the team topped the table at the end of the first half of the 1970/71 season, President Leclerc, a successful businessman from the media industry who tended to make spontaneous decisions and go it alone, put him with Lucien Leduc in December 1970 - in this month, Zatelli was named coach of the year by France Football - again another coach ahead of schedule, compensated for this with Zatelli's appointment as the de facto but less influential sports director.

15 months later, “the beautiful Mario” took over responsibility for the third time for the Phocéens - a name common in France for the residents of the city and the players in the association - with whom he reached the top of the national league in 1972. The top-class team in defense and attack, including Carnus , Bosquier , Novi , Gress , Magnusson , Bonnel , Skoblar and Couécou , was again cup winners and national champions, thus winning the first doublé in the club's history. For Mario Zatelli himself it was the titles eleven and twelve, if you add that from 1971, even his thirteenth. In European club competitions he was on the sideline in eight games, two of which were counted among the early highlights of Olympique: the 2-0 win against Dukla Prague in the 1969/70 cup winners' competition , when his eleven managed to win through Loubet's goal in extra time Round of 16 could qualify, and the "home game" held in Lyon against Juventus Turin in the European Cup of National Champions in 1972/73 , but the 1-0 victory was not enough for a progression.

After the second match day of the 1973/74 season, his coaching time in Marseille ended prematurely again; When asked why President Leclerc dismissed his so successful coach several times at short notice, the long-time Marseille journalist and author Alain Pécheral answered as follows:

“ In retrospect, they were inextricably linked, but they weren't inseparable on their way to success [of the club]: the former surprisingly inflicted the most serious injuries on the latter by firing him three times despite his positive results. This behavior is difficult to understand. But nothing was ever easy with Marcel Leclerc. "

Obviously, like all employees, the President only tolerated Zatelli as long as they supported his view of things without contradiction. Another source explains the presidential decisions succinctly: "He was not a president like the others." On the other hand, the ambivalence of the relationship between the two men illustrates Leclerc's praise "This is not a coach, this is a connoisseur" .

In the years that followed, Zatelli was a frequent guest at the Stade Vélodrome , occasionally made himself useful in word and deed at the club and otherwise enjoyed his retirement - as a long-time coach at professional clubs, he received a pension from the French association - on the Côte d'Azur . There he died at the age of 91 in 2004. Almost four decades after his playing career ended, Mario Zatelli is the coach who was responsible for the Marseille team during the largest number of competitive games in the club's history (197). (As of December 21, 2012)

Self-image and concept

As a coach, he relied on an offensive concept with four real strikers at that time - which is understandable in view of his own playing career; During the seasons from 1969/70 to 1972/73 Marseille scored 314 goals in 148 point games. At the same time he looked after the offspring; With Albert Emon , an 18-year-old striker was part of the professional squad in 1972, whom Zatelli had brought to Marseille's youth team four years earlier. For Joseph Yegba Maya , himself a goal scorer and member of the 1969 cup winners' eleven, the coach's personal approach to his players and his optimistic attitude were an important part of his recipe for success. About his ability to convey this optimism to others, Zatelli remarked even after winning the cup in 1969: "A team has never been hungrier ... For two months they talked about nothing else." A cunning move by the coach may have contributed to this: as early as the turn of the year In 1968/69 he had provoked Leclerc to the cocky promise (“Well, come to the final!”) To pay the team a million francs success bonus if they win the cup final. When what at that point in time - before the sixteenth finals - appeared only highly theoretical case actually occurred, the President had no other choice; for the payout, however, he waited for the income from the European Cup home game against Dukla Prague.

However, the trainer did not see a particular recipe for success in himself:

“ You have to watch your players closely and learn to understand them, you shouldn't see play and training as work, but as an opportunity to express yourself and to feel joy. I don't believe in strict training plans. I believe, in life as in play, in the power of improvisation and the virtue of simplicity. "

Mario Zatelli did not allow himself to be ordered around, despite all the restraint, but resolved conflicts in his own way. When Marcel Leclerc rushed from the stands to the dugout during a weak performance by the team to demand the replacement of striker Charly Loubet , Zatelli stood up without a word without obeying this order and left the stadium. At home he learned from the radio that Olympique had won the match 1-0 - thanks to a goal from Loubet. The following day the President received the trainer "with arms wide open and flowers in his voice . "

Palmarès

As a player

As a trainer

  • French champion: 1972 (and proportionately [Hinserie] 1971, also runner-up 1970)
  • French cup winner: 1969, 1972 (and finalist 1962)
  • French Coach of the Year : 1970

As a sports director

  • French champion: 1952 (and proportionally [back series] 1971)
  • French cup winner: 1952
  • Coupe Latine finalist : 1952

literature

  • 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
  • L'Équipe / Gérard Ejnès: Coupe de France. La folle épopée. L'Équipe, Issy-les-Moulineaux 2007 ISBN 978-2-915535-62-4
  • Alain Pécheral: La grande histoire de l'OM. Des origines à nos jours. Ed. Prolongations, o. O. 2007 ISBN 978-2-916400-07-5
  • Jean-Philippe Rethacker / Jacques Thibert: La fabuleuse histoire du football. Minerva, Genève 1996, 2003 2 ISBN 978-2-8307-0661-1
  • Alfred Wahl / Pierre Lanfranchi: Les footballeurs professionnels des années trente à nos jours. Hachette, Paris 1995 ISBN 978-2-01-235098-4

Web links

Remarks

  1. ↑ Wahl / Lanfranchi, p. 74
  2. ↑ Pécheral, pp. 187-191; Team line-ups for these competitions, which prove Zatelli's appearances, can be found for 1932 (championship) and 1934 (cup) in Roland H. Auvray: Le livre d'or du football pied-noir et north-africain. Maroc – Algérie – Tunisie. Presses du Midi, Toulon 1995, ISBN 2-87867-050-7 , pp. 84 and 87.
  3. ↑ Chaumier, p. 318
  4. ↑ Just Fontaine: Reprise de volée. Solar, supra, 1970, p. 38
  5. ↑ Rethacker / Thibert, p. 147
  6. ↑ Article "How 'Jeanette and Lisette' were hired as professional footballers" from the Austrian Sport-Tagblatt dated October 31, 1935 (full article can be found here )
  7. ↑ Wahl / Lanfranchi, pp. 63–66
  8. ↑ a b c Pécheral, p. 188
  9. ↑ Wahl / Lanfranchi, p. 87
  10. ↑ a b c d L'Équipe / Ejnès: Coupe, p. 157
  11. ↑ Pécheral, pp. 385f.
  12. ↑ “regard de velours” (literally: velvet look) - Rethacker / Thibert, p. 141.
  13. ↑ Figures for 1935 to 1940 from Sophie Guillet / François Laforge: Le guide français et international du football éd. 2007. Vecchi, Paris 2006 ISBN 2-7328-6842-6 , pp. 137-141; Cup appearances 1938 to 1940 from L'Équipe / Ejnès: Coupe, p. 95.
  14. ↑ http://tfc.wifeo.com/infos-club.php
  15. ↑ Pécheral, pp. 387f.
  16. ↑ Pécheral, p. 379
  17. ↑ Chaumier, p. 318; Pécheral, p. 189
  18. ↑ L'Équipe / Gérard Ejnès: La belle histoire. L'équipe de France de football. L'Équipe, Issy-les-Moulineaux 2004 ISBN 2-9519605-3-0 , p. 307/308
  19. ↑ Rethacker / Thibert, pp. 213f.
  20. ^ Pierre Delaunay / Jacques de Ryswick / Jean Cornu: 100 ans de football en France. Atlas, Paris 1982, 1983² ISBN 2-7312-0108-8 , pp. 196/197; There is also a photo of Zatelli next to Andoire on the dugout during the national cup final.
  21. ↑ France Football: Olympique de Marseille. Spécial - Clubs de légende, 2008, p. 24
  22. ↑ Pécheral, p. 190
  23. ↑ Pécheral, pp. 178f.
  24. ↑ Pécheral, pp. 182-187
  25. ↑ Under page no longer available , search in web archives: there is a photo of Zatelli and team captain Jean Djorkaeff with the cup, taken immediately after the 1969 final.@1@ 2Template: Dead Link / www.lequipe.fr
  26. ↑ L'Équipe / Gérard Ejnès: 50 ans de Coupes d'Europe. L'Équipe, Issy-les-Moulineaux 2005 ISBN 2-9519605-9-X , pp. 259-261 and 271
  27. ↑ "Indissociables a posteriori, mais pas vraiment inséparables durant cette marche vers le succès, le premier infligeant à l'autre d'étonnants camouflets en l'éloignant à trois reprises de son poste d'entraîneur de l'équipe pro, alors même qu 'il venait d'assurer la montée ...! Attitude difficile à admettre. Mais rien n'était jamais facile avec Marcel Leclerc. "  - Pécheral, p. 183
  28. ↑ L'Équipe / Ejnès: Coupe, p. 145
  29. ↑ Rethacker / Thibert, p. 386
  30. ↑ Pécheral, p. 187
  31. ↑ Wahl / Lanfranchi, p. 99
  32. ↑ Chaumier, p. 318; Pécheral, p. 191
  33. ↑ France Football, January 10, 2012, p. 7
  34. ↑ Sa carrière de joueur ( memento of March 20, 2008 in the Internet Archive ) Emon was himself coach of Olympique's professional team several times from the end of 2000, mostly only on an interim basis, but also as head coach in the 2006/07 season.
  35. ↑ Page no longer available , search in web archives: (Article by Nicolas Deltort from ActuFoot34, issue 30, February 2008)@1@ 2Template: Toter Link / footnostalgie.free.fr
  36. ↑ L'Équipe / Ejnès: Coupe, p. 385
  37. ↑ Pécheral, p. 193/194, who commented on this with the words “It is always the cunningest who become presidents” .
  38. ↑ Rethacker / Thibert, p. 434
  39. ↑ Pécheral, p. 213
  40. ↑ List on the RSSSF website
This version was added to the list of articles worth reading on May 23, 2008 .
personal data
SURNAME Zatelli, Mario
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Moroccan-French soccer player and coach
DATE OF BIRTH December 21, 1912
PLACE OF BIRTH Sétif , Algeria
DATE OF DEATH January 7, 2004
Place of death Sainte-Maxime , Var department