Paul Vaessen

Paul Leon Vaessen (born October 16, 1961 in Gillingham , Kent , England , † August 8, 2001 in Bristol , England) was an English football player .

Vaessen was born in Gillingham, with his father Leon Vaessen having played professional football for Millwall FC and Gillingham FC . As a center forward Paul Vaessen joined Arsenal FC in 1977 and made his debut for the club at the age of only 16 on September 27, 1978 in a UEFA Cup match against 1. FC Lokomotive Leipzig . In the English championship he was used for the first time the following year in the game against Chelsea on May 14, 1979. He signed his first professional contract in July of the same year, scored five goals in 13 games in his first full season 1979/80 and was considered a promising talent for the future of the club.

The most famous of these goals was Vaessen's goal in the semi-final second leg against Juventus Turin in the European Cup Winners' Cup on April 23, 1980. After Arsenal had only played 1-1 at their home stadium and needed a goal in the second leg because of the away goal rule , Vaessen was at the Stadio Communale came on after 75 minutes when the score was 0-0. There, after a cross from Graham Rix with a header just two minutes before the end of the game, he scored the decisive goal to make it 1-0 for Arsenal. This moved the club into the final of the competition, in which Vaessen should not play. This was the first time Vaessen had shot an English club to an away win at Juventus Turin.

Despite the promising career start, Vaessen was repeatedly plagued by injury concerns and was unable to establish himself permanently in the team in the next two seasons. In the derby against local rivals Tottenham Hotspur , he suffered a serious injury and had to undergo a knee operation. As a result, he missed the entire 1982/1983 season and ended his career early in the summer of 1983 at the age of only 21. He scored nine goals in 39 games for Arsenal.

After the end of his footballing career, Vaessen quickly got into an orientation crisis and from then on Arsenal FC also gave little support to its former player, so that Vaessen, according to his own statement, had the feeling that he had landed "on the scrap heap". He got by with casual jobs as a mail deliverer and construction worker and became more and more addicted to drugs at the time . In order to be able to finance his heroin consumption , he fell into the petty criminal milieu and was tried several times for criminal offenses in the field of drug-related crime. He was also stabbed six times in a failed drug deal. Although he recovered from it and tried more often to combat his addiction, he always relapsed. Another attempt to work in the field of physiotherapy also failed due to his increasing incapacity for work, which was also due to the injuries he had suffered from his footballing days.

In August 2001, Vaessen was found dead in his bathroom. The autopsy found high levels of drug residue in the bloodstream. In contrast to his famous goal against Juventus Turin, his death received little response from the British press.

Web links

• Photo by Paul Vaessen
• The terrible death of a forgotten hero (Guardian Unlimited, English)