Raymond Kopa

Raymond Kopa
Raymond Kopa (1963)
Personnel
birthday	October 13, 1931
place of birth	Nœux-les-Mines ,  France
date of death	March 3, 2017
Place of death	Angers , France
position	striker
Juniors
Years	station
	US Nœux-les-Mines
Men's
Years	station	Games (goals) 1
0000-1949	US Nœux-les-Mines
1949-1951	SCO Angers	60 (15)
1951-1956	Stade Reims	158 (48)
1956-1959	real Madrid	79 (24)
1959-1967	Stade Reims	244 (33)
National team
Years	selection	Games (goals)
1952-1962	France	45 (18)
1 Only league games are given.

Raymond Kopa (born October 13, 1931 as Raymond Kopaszewski in Nœux-les-Mines , Pas-de-Calais department ; † March 3, 2017 in Angers ) was a French football player of Polish descent . Alongside Michel Platini and Zinédine Zidane, he is one of the best French footballers of all time and one of the top players of the 20th century worldwide . During his career he was mostly placed as a center forward , later mostly on half right and in between again and again as right winger.

The most outstanding characteristics of the only 1.68 m tall Kopa included speed and maneuverability, his ingenious handling of the ball, scoring danger and precision of the pass, whereby he always put his individual class at the service of the team. Raymond Kopa took part in the World Cup finals in Switzerland (1954) and Sweden (1958) , won the European Cup three times with Real Madrid from 1957 to 1959 and was in the first final of this competition with Stade Reims in 1956 . With these two clubs he also achieved two successes at the Coupe Latine and a total of six national championships. He was personally honored, among other things, as the best player in the World Cup tournament in Sweden, as a footballer in Europe (1958) and three times as the French " Player of the Season " or Sportsman of the Year .

Even at a young age, the media described him as the "Napoleon of football". Admitted to the Legion of Honor as the first football player in November 1970 , President Chirac promoted him from knight to officer in April 2007.

His biography is also an example of the opportunities and problems of social advancement that football - not only in France - offered members of the “doubly disadvantaged second and third generation of immigrants”, especially in the first two post-war decades, when they were ready to join the To integrate society of their target country. Kopa described this path in 1972 with the words:

“If I had not had my Polish roots… and grew up in a more affluent family, I would not have felt the irresistible urge to break out of my milieu, the Kopa… from Stade Reims, Real Madrid and the French national team would probably not have existed. … [I would have become a very good player even without this], but… without the work in the mine my name would still be Kopaszewski. "

Jersey replica from Stade de Reims' heyday - in fact, Stade competed without a logo on the chest.

Childhood and youth

The street footballer

Raymond Kopa comes from a pure mining family : his paternal grandparents came in 1919 with four children, including Kopa's 13-year-old father Franz, from Poland to the northern French coalfield between Lens and Béthune . Like most of the roughly 6,000 other Polish post-war immigrants there , the Kopaszewskis preserved their language and their Catholic faith , while the younger family members increasingly adopted the way of life of their French neighbors. The male relatives of his mother, Hélène, who was also born in Poland, worked underground for at least three generations . He described his home as simple, but not poor, and his school days with the words that he was “neither gifted for mathematics, nor for history, nor for the rest”, especially since only Polish was spoken at home. He spent a lot of time playing football since early childhood - in the morning in the schoolyard, in the afternoon in the garden of his parents 'house and on Sundays during the half-time break on the sports field, when he was already playing a game as a five-year-old after the family reunion of the Kopaszewskis in his grandparents' house in neighboring Mazingarbe of the local amateur club.

When he was eight he founded his first street football team, mostly with older Polish children, but also some French and Italian neighborhood children. This équipe du Chemin-Perdu - at No. 5 on the street of the abandoned path , a long row of simple brick buildings blackened by coal dust, similar to the colliery colonies of the Ruhr area , was his parents' house - quickly made a name for itself even against older teams. The dribbling strong Raymond contributed so much that the local club US Nœux-les-Mines asked him to join in 1941. At the age of eleven he already played in his youth team (cadets) , at 14 in the juniors and at only 16 in the men's team. Kopa himself says: “I actually always played with older people”. About the effects of the German occupation between 1940 and 1944 - the heavily industrialized north of France was subordinate to the military administration in Brussels as a zone interdite ("forbidden zone")  - he only reports that he owed his first leather ball to German soldiers albeit involuntarily on their part: the boys stole the valuable piece during a game between two soldiers' teams, which Kopa later commented with a wink as “almost an act of resistance ”.

"Knappe" from fourteen

After graduating from school in 1945, he looked in vain for an apprenticeship as an electrician - he wanted to avoid the “inhuman shift work 600 meters underground” that his father and older brother Henri experienced every day, but “when I had given my full name, the interview ended ". For the next two and a half years he worked underground in the local mine, where he initially had to push the fully loaded hunt out of the tunnel to the shaft . In an accident at work in October 1947, the thumb and forefinger of his left hand were smashed and partially amputated; Until his death he received an accident pension of € 30 per month. Thanks to the advocacy of the US Nœux chairman, who worked as an engineer in the same mine, Kopa was then only assigned to the early shift and was able to take part in team training more regularly. In the meantime, his footballing skills had also found recognition beyond the club and led to regular consideration in the northern French regional junior selection. With this team, whose regular line-up included Jean Vincent and René Dereuddre, two other future national players, he reached the semi-finals of the French Cadets championship in the spring of 1948 , which, however, despite two Kopa goals against Lorraine - was one of its ranks with Roger Piantoni also a later strike partner Kopas - 3: 6 was lost.

From November 1947, Constant Tison, the coach of the league team, already used him regularly in matches in the second highest amateur class. Tison was convinced of Kopa's abilities, which in addition to feeling for the ball, goal danger, endurance and an overview of the game included above-average training enthusiasm, team serviceability, fighting spirit and the will to win: “He came straight from work, coal dust in his eyebrows, and hardly a bite to eat or at least had a short rest, he jumped over a wall and stood in sandals on the sports field. ”Kopa himself explains his absolute devotion by saying that at the time he would have done everything“ to escape my life as a black face ”. Only the header game remained in deficit, even if he trained it regularly. According to Tison, he was "a small, bright but reserved boy who listened a lot and spoke little": He was all the more convincing on the field, scored the only goal of the match at the US Tourcoing in his first point game and scored against Nœux ' toughest promotion rivals US Boulogne even five hits in an 8-1 victory.

After all, his growing fame in the spring of 1948 meant that he was transferred to a post in the mine where he had to knock loose lumps of rock and coal stuck in the carts - “not exactly what I dreamed of, but finally on the surface ". During this time he also earned something with his footballing skills for the first time: a spectator praised a bonus of 1,000 old francs for the scorer of the next goal during a point game  . When his teammates, with whom he wanted to share the amount won, refused, he gave the money to his mother that evening. And after the US Nœux had ascended to the highest regional amateur league in the summer of 1948 , the club thanked him for his achievements with a bike, which he also rode to training as a professional.

Kopaszewski becomes Kopa

Beginning of its national popularity

In May 1949, Raymond Kopaszewski finished the finals of the national “competition of young footballers” in the Olympic Stadium in Colombes in second place - a single miss cost the otherwise safe penalty taker this title, for which 71 young players had competed at regional level after previous qualifying rounds. During two days they had to prove their skills in all game situations (attack and defensive behavior, passes, crosses and shots on goal, teamwork and assertiveness, execution of balls at rest and much more) in front of a jury of association and club coaches. In order to qualify for Colombes, Kopa had to prevail in eliminations at the departmental and regional level (in Béthune and Lille). That he took part in it at all was only thanks to Tison's persistence, who woke him up early in the morning and brought him to Béthune. On the day after the final, however, the juror Gabriel Hanot , full-time editor-in-chief of l'Équipe and member of the selection committee of the French national team, wrote :

“The real main actor of an excellent year was an unknown young player named Raymond Kopaszewski, a game-intelligent and extraordinarily talented ... who was willing to take risks. This boy would have belonged to the youth national team [which had become European champions in the Netherlands in April 1949 ] had he not been injured at the time. "

In fact, no injury at all prevented Kopa's deployment; rather, at that time he only had Polish citizenship - French citizenship could normally only be acquired at the time when he came of age, i.e. from the 21st birthday. Directly after the competition in Colombes, two professional clubs tried harder to sign Raymond Kopaszewski: Stade Reims , who had just become national champions for the first time , and second division SCO Angers . Kopa himself would have liked to stay in his home region because of the closeness to his family, but to his regret none of the "big northern clubs" - neither OSC Lille nor RC Lens , not even US Valenciennes or CO Roubaix-Tourcoing  - showed interest. Lilles president Louis Henno judged after seeing Kopa during a game with the North selection: "too petite" - a bitter misjudgment for the OSC. And the Lens Talent Scouts literally overlooked him, even though they regularly looked for players in the Polish communities of northern France. While the board of the US Nœux would have liked to keep him for a year or two, Constant Tison advocated his further development at a higher-class club. After initial hesitation, the storm talent, his father Franz and Angers' trainer Camille Cottin signed Kopa's first player contract as a "semi-professional" in Tison's apartment, which provided for a gross monthly salary of FF 9,000  - a lot of money at the end of the 1940s for a 17-year-old.

First professional contract with SCO Angers

Occasionally, children from his street team had shortened his name to “Kopa”, but the first step his new club took was to use it officially. It was difficult for the novice to start out in a completely unfamiliar environment - even if Cottin took great care of the newcomers - but he compensated for his homesickness primarily by increasing the effort on the training ground. He was only able to visit his family during the week-long winter break. In the first half of the 1949/50 season, the SCO made Angers Kopa a full professional, and what was left of his correspondingly higher salaries - 21,000 francs a month, about what a simple employee in the private sector brought home - he put into a savings account . Apart from the cost of his full board, he hardly spent anything, often went fishing or played table tennis, board games and cards in the clubhouse, so that after a year around 70,000 francs - his "first piggy bank" - were on the books. He made his Division 2 debut at the start of the season at AS Monaco , and scored his first two goals in the following home game, which Angers won 4-0 against Marseille's 2nd team. Overall, Kopa's first year as a professional was not very successful: In the championship the SCO landed in 15th place out of 18 participants, and in the cup he was eliminated early on against a lower class opponent. In addition, Kopa was seriously injured for the first time at the end of October 1949 when an opponent gave him a long flesh wound on his chin while fighting for the ball with the shoe studs. In the years that followed, it was mostly his ankles that suffered from numerous attacks by opposing defenders and both had to be operated on after malleolar fractures .

When Cottin's young players were given a break in January 1950, they sent the center-forward as their spokesman to the club chairman to complain. Although he initially attacked the 18-year-old rather violently because of his insubordination and called him a "little revolutionary", Kopa finally managed to get all four adolescents to play in a friendly guest appearance in the jersey of the neighboring SO Cholet and thus compensate for the loss of bonuses . Since the SCO had suffered a hefty defeat without the youngsters, they were back in Angers' first team a week later.

During the summer break in 1950, Kopa seriously considered being homesick about being reamateurised and returning to Nœux-les-Mines. At the same time, a shy relationship developed with the sister of his storm partner Claude Bourrigault , whom he had known since the 1949 youth competition. Only three years later, when Raymond Kopa had long since stopped playing in Angers , did he marry Christiane; the couple lived together until Kopa's death.

In terms of sport, his second year (1950/51) was also ambivalent: the SCO landed 14th in the championship, but the "playing center forward" - in the two years at Angers he had scored 15 goals in 60 competitive games and provided significantly more assists - increasingly attracted the interest of sports journalists and, as a consequence, some first division clubs , including Girondins Bordeaux , Toulouse FC and the local RC Lens. Not only for this reason, in retrospect, Raymond Kopa judged the two years in Angers to be useful for his development.

During a friendly against Stade Reims in April 1951, his player-coach Albert Batteux became aware of Kopa, then spoke to him personally and persuaded his president to negotiate with the financially struggling SCO Angers about his transfer . At the end of April, Reims initially borrowed Kopa for a game against the Spanish national team - the trip and appearance with this top team at the Estadio Chamartín had impressed the 19-year-old. After the 1: 2, Batteux only said "Good, little one" to the guest player, who was uncertain about his performance. Three months later, the red and white dress of the Rémois Kopas was the new work clothing after its president Henri Germain had transferred 1.8 million francs to Angers. Only then were the contractual conditions negotiated with the purchased player - at the time, they literally belonged to their first professional club until their 35th birthday (see also below )  - and Kopa again proved to be a successful negotiator on his own behalf: his starting salary in Champagne was 40,000 FF per month plus success fees. The fact that Germain also accepted a one-off payment ("hand money") of FF 500,000 demanded by Kopa was due solely to the advocacy of Batteux, who is said to have convinced his president with the words "He is a future national player".

At Europe's strongest clubs

Stade de Reims (1951–1956)

Stade Reims meant a new class in several ways: Kopa had not only arrived in the first division, in which he was twice champion and once runner-up in the five following years, but he played in one in his first season (1951/52) Team with eleven current or future French internationals: Jacowski , Marche , Penverne , Jonquet , Cicci , Leblond , Méano , Bliard , the brothers Paul and Pierre Sinibaldi and coach Batteux, who himself stormed 19 top division games this season. With Appel , a Dutch international was also active for the Rémois. In the four seasons that followed, Glovacki , Siatka , Hidalgo and Zimny ​​were joined by other national players. It would not have been surprising if the newcomer had to accept a certain changeover time with only occasional use in view of this competition. In fact, his name was only missing in the very first game of the season, and that was only because the football association had not received a release note at the start of the season.

Raymond Kopa felt right at home in this environment, both athletically and personally, to which a number of factors contributed. On the one hand there was a “homely element” with the teammates Templin , Glovacki, Siatka and Zimny, who were of Polish origin or who grew up in the north of France , and who even played briefly in Nœux-les-Mines; In addition, the team had a relatively low average age of just over 24 years. During the first few weeks in Reims, the 32-year-old coach brought him into his own parents' house; then Kopa moved into a boarding house in which several other younger players also lived. As he remembers, the fight for the eleven regular places went off without resentment and intrigue, and older players such as Paul Sinibaldi in particular took care of the new ones so that they did not experience any problems with acceptance or integration.

The coach consistently played offensively with five strikers in front of a solid defense and in this system allowed each individual individual freedom and mistakes. When Kopa once self-critically remarked during one of the many conversations that he occasionally played too stubbornly and was too much in love with the ball, Batteux threatened that if he stopped dribbling he would put him on the bench: “Your dribbles are a terrible weapon - they are your most important weapon Trump and thus also that of the team, for whom you thereby open up freedom ”.

Kopa benefited from these conditions, which were perceived as positive, and was also able to contribute a great deal to the club's rise to one of the top addresses in Europe - people spoke admiringly of the "sparkling champagne football" not only in France - and so it only lasted well a year until he was allowed to wear the blue jersey of the senior national team for the first time.

He played his first league game for Stade on September 2, 1951 against Racing Strasbourg ; he scored his first first division goal eleven days later in a 5-2 win over Racing Lens. After the 34th matchday he had scored eight of the 64 goals of his eleven, including three in the 8: 1 against Olympique Marseille , against which he scored again in the second leg. His favorite position in the middle of the storm was occupied by goalgetter Bram Appel, so that he was used as a right winger this year . The physical strain of another 35 friendship and cup games was considerable, but these were necessary to cover the Reims budget: the club earned around three quarters of its income from away games. These permanent " English weeks " were no problem for Kopa , because he was obsessed with training and many years later still enjoyed every minute on the pitch, especially since it was always clear to him how much he owed this game:

“Is football a job? No! As soon as I step on the field ... I am enjoying myself and still get paid for it. Every time I feel the ball on my foot, I tell myself that I am privileged and that I am incredibly lucky. ... Sometimes I think in my heart that this is just a dream and that I am a spectator who goes home after the game to work in the mine, to go down to hell. "

As a modest symbol of the new "luxury", he replaced his old bicycle with a small car.

Although one of the youngest players in the stadiums, Kopa quickly became the extended arm of Albert Batteux, whom most of the players the football coach coached during his successful career were still in the stadiums years later due to his professional skills, personal approach and willingness to communicate praised the highest notes and affectionately called Bébert . Kopa, who dedicates several chapters in his autobiographies to the trainer, sums it up with the formula “Batteux, the happiness of my life”. The combination of these two personalities with an excellent squad brought them and the club numerous successes in the following years.

1952/53 Reims was French champion. Kopa, for whom Léon Glovacki stormed on the right wing, played nominally as a withdrawn center forward, castling with Appel frequently and scoring 13 goals in 33 league encounters . He became a national player in the first half of the season (see below ) . After the end of the season, he also won his first international title in the Coupe Latine , scoring three of the five Reims goals, including two in the 3-0 final against AC Milan . The accidental death of his former roommate Francis Méano , however, put a sad end to a highly successful year.

In the following season Stade Reims was runner-up, Kopa scored eleven goals in 31 games; he also scored a goal in the 6-3 final win against OSC Lille in the Coupe Charles Drago . After the end of the season he and five other Rémois took part in the World Cup , which was disappointing for France . In 1954/55 his partner in the inner storm, Bram Appel, had left the red-whites, but his “substitute” René Bliard also harmonized perfectly with the now half-right Kopa (again 31 league matches and eleven hits) and was hit with 30 hits straight away Division 1 top scorer . Kopa had long had the reputation of an excellent game designer beyond France's borders, even if Reims had to admit defeat this time in the final for the Coupe Latine Real Madrid 2-0. The national player Antoine Cuissard , an outside runner who at AS Saint-Étienne and OGC Nice had the task to limit Kopa's radius of action several times, recalled:

“He was simply unbelievable. If you attacked him, he would hit a hook or let you run into the void through a ' stepover '. If you tried to block his path, he would steer the ball out of your ankle and onto a teammate with the precision of a watchmaker. It was practically unstoppable by fair means. He got on blindly with his friend Glovacki in particular; you could have blindfolded both, and they would still have combined. "

In 1955 Kopa also directed a game between a European continental team and the English national team . The fact that he had to start his military service in the same year did not detract from his performance, especially since he was assigned to one of the “football battalions” and was given leave to play games without any problems: at the end of the year the newspaper l'Équipe named him French Sportsman of the Year (“Champion of Master ") . This title had not been awarded to anyone before and only three other footballers after him.

Reims was weak in the league and was only tenth at the end of the 1955/56 season; Kopa only scored five goals in 30 appearances. Instead, all concentration was on the first ever European Cup , in which the club advanced to the final (see below ) , where the Madrilenians once again had the upper hand. Raymond Kopa nevertheless finished third in the European Player of the Year election, which was also held for the first time at the end of 1956 .

Real Madrid (1956-1959)

On the day of this European Cup final, a caricature graced the cover of l'Équipe in which Real's captain Alfredo Di Stéfano reached for the cup on which Raymond Kopa was enthroned with the words “We want the Copa - and the Kopa” . In fact, a year earlier he had convinced the people in charge at Real, Santiago Bernabéu and Raimundo Saporta , with his terrific performance with the national team in Madrid . And for Kopa, although AC Milan tried to get him, only Real Madrid could achieve even more in terms of sport than in Champagne. Kopa initially thought their official offer was a joke: depending on the success, 15 to 20 million francs per year - equivalent to 180,000 to 240,000  DM and therefore a good six times as much as he had earned up to then - and after three years he was free to decide which one The club he played after. In April 1956, before the European Cup final, he signed the contract; Stade Reims received FF 52 million transfer fee. The fact that the French, who were interested in football, did not hold back for the move became apparent in November of that year, when the readers of France Football voted him the “best post-war player” ahead of Roger Marche and Larbi Ben Barek .

Kopa's first appearance in the white dress of the Madrilenians was a prestigious friendly match against the Brazilian CR Vasco da Gama , in which he contributed two goals to the 4-2 victory. He had come into an unfamiliar situation at Real: the absolute ruler on the field and behind the scenes was called Di Stéfano. It speaks for Kopa's qualities that he was able to take a step back, continued to play consistently at a high level - in his first season Kopa was one of only five players who were used in all eight European Cup encounters - and contributed a lot to Real's titles won annually. Kopa contradicted the often read assertion that there was a permanent crisis between the two directors; Although Di Stéfano was quite moody and "we snapped at each other more than once", he sincerely admires his talent, courage and dedication and considers him the most complete footballing personality ever. Both players visited each other regularly long after their careers ended. He also got on well with his new colleagues, especially Héctor Rial , José María Zárraga and Joseíto , both inside and outside the stadium. And Kopa also welcomed the commitment of Ferenc Puskás , who came to Real in 1958 "with a bulging senator belly" but got back into shape very quickly, and whom Kopa has called his idol since he joined the entire Reims team in 1953 6: 3 the Hungarians had seen at Wembley . In Madrid only one thing bothered him: that Real did not let him play for the French national team in the first two years.

During these three years Kopita ("Little Kopa"), as the fans called him, won two Spanish championship titles under the coaches Villalonga and Carniglia (1957 and 1958; 1959 Real came second in the Primera División ) and three times the European Cup, the third time (1959) against Stade Reims. In this final at the Neckar Stadium in Stuttgart, he stretched his ligaments after a collision with his future club-mate Jean Vincent . It was Reims' coach Batteux who put a supportive knee bandage on him. In 1957, Madrid was also victorious in the last Coupe Latine, which makes Kopa the only player who was used in three finals of this competition. Only in the Spanish cup competition was he as unsuccessful as in the French : Real Madrid only reached at least the final in 1958, which was lost 2-0 to Athletic Bilbao . In the Spanish league, he scored 24 goals in 79 appearances.

Shortly after the 1958 World Cup, Saporta offered him a five-year contract extension with an annual guaranteed income of 20 million old francs. However, for family reasons, Kopa did not want to commit until 1964 and only signed for another year. When he moved back to France prematurely in the summer of 1959, Stade Reims alone came into question, both sportily and financially. The club was only able to buy the player out of his contract with Real, to whom RSC Anderlecht had also made a lucrative offer, with the support of a French fruit juice manufacturer, who contributed FF 58 million, the equivalent of half a million DM, and for it was allowed to advertise with Kopa's name. Stade also had to commit to three friendlies against Real and one against Anderlecht.

Back in Champagne (1959–1967)

The face of the team had changed significantly compared to 1956. Of the “old ones” only Giraudo , Jacquet , Siatka , Jonquet , Leblond and Trainer Batteux were there; numerous newcomers, almost all national players ( Colonna , Wendling , Rodzik , Muller as well as Fontaine , Piantoni and Vincent almost the entire "dream storm" of the World Cup in Sweden), added the Reims ranks. In 1960 Glovacki also returned, and with the young Sauvage and the Moroccan international Akesbi (this from 1961) two new goalscorers came for the seriously injured Fontaine. In 1962, Kaelbel, another player from the 1958 World Cup team, moved to Champagne.

In 1959/60 Kopa became French champions for the third time with this formation - with a seven-point lead - and the offensive was particularly brilliant: to the 109 goals in 38 games, the returnees had contributed 14 goals in his 36 appearances and ensured them with numerous passes that five other comrades also came up with a double-digit number of hits. He was awarded the Étoile d'Or by France Football as the best player of the season in the league and reached sixth place in the 1960s election for the best European footballer. For coach Batteux, the team this season was "the best of the entire Reims era". The following season Reims finished in third place (Kopa: 30 games, five goals), but in the European Cup, which was approached with great expectations, the end came in the round of 16 against Burnley FC , with the director of his team not in the important second leg due to an ankle injury was available. In 1961/62, however, the French league winner was again Stade Reims, although Kopa only scored two goals in 30 games, and thus fewer goals than ever before.

The 1962/63 season brought a sensitive turning point in the life of Raymond Kopa, although ostensibly less in the sporting field: Stade Reims came second in Division 1 , Kopa only scored a single goal in 34 point games. The semi-final in the Coupe de France and the premature failure in the European Cup (see below ) left the Rémois without a title, but gave no cause for serious concern. Heavy weighed as even the surprising decision of President Germain , Batteux ' contract after 13 successful years as a trainer and an equally long time not to renew as a player of the club: none of the older assets did not understand this step, Kopa already.

The "family man" Kopa suffered particularly difficult months in his private life : first one of his wife's brothers died of a brain tumor , then his father, suffering from silicosis, and in February 1963 his four and a half year old son Denis , who had a lymphoma . In this depressing context, there was also the fact that he felt personally betrayed and publicly exposed by Sélectionneur Georges Verriest after the international match against Hungary (November 1962). At this point, however, it was not foreseeable that this game would have been Kopa's last appearance for les Bleus .

But when Verriest called him back to the Équipe tricolore a year later , but was not prepared to take back his allegations, the player left the training camp and was suspended from the association for six weeks. During this time, there was heated debate in the French press about the question of whether Kopa's style of play was still appropriate in view of the internationally prevailing 4-2-4 system . Relations with the association's superiors continued to cool since Kopa said in an interview with France Dimanche newspaper in June 1963 : "The players are slaves of the clubs". He was alluding to the fact that a young player who was mostly inexperienced in contractual matters at that time could not leave his first club until his 35th birthday without his consent, but conversely had no say if the club sold him to someone else . It was not until 1969 that the UNFP players' union succeeded in abolishing this "eternal" bond between players. Kopa was also banned from making these statements - even for half a year - albeit on probation.

Parts of the sports press also reacted to the interview with violent rejection; so he was accused in France Football of being unable to understand the "complex problems that are structurally inherent in professional football". The magazine recommended to him: "The only truth that Raymond Kopa has to offer is on the lawn, his best gift ... is his game"; Lanfranchi / Wahl sum this up as “play on and shut up”.

Under the new coach Camille Cottin - a good acquaintance for Kopa from years together in Angers - Stade Reims suffered a real crash in 1963/64: the previous year's runner-up ended the season in 17th place and had to relegate. Kopa, who despite his sadness and annoyance as well as the suspension of several weeks, had made 25 league appearances and was even used in a world team against England in October 1963, decided after a brief flirtation with a move to Stade Français Paris for Reims also in Division 2 to be loyal to:

“If I had left I would have felt like a deserter. ... After 15 years of professional football, I was by no means disliked the idea of ​​playing alongside all the young players who had great expectations and many skills. Before a game at Racing Paris I told them to go out on the pitch and show us why we are called Stade de Reims. "

Akesbi, Moreau and Wendling also stayed, but several of his teammates such as Kaelbel, Piantoni, Rodzik, Sauvage and Vincent left the club. However, there was also a returnee: Reims' "football monument" Robert Jonquet replaced Cottin in the dugout. On August 30, 1964 Kopa played for the first time in over 13 years in the second division, in which the immediate rise in 1965 was clearly missed in tenth. A year later, the red and whites returned to the top class as second division champions. In a squad that had no well-known players apart from goalkeeper D'Arménia and striker Heutte , even a still good Raymond Kopa (33 appearances, three hits) could not prevent relegation. The dismissal of Jonquet, who was replaced by Claude Prosdocimi at the end of April 1967, also had no effect . Kopa seems to have been involved in this coaching change, with whom Jonquet increasingly had differences over the game system; after his early replacement, Jonquet said: "I should have believed Kopa when he told me he just had to lift his little finger and I would be fired".

Farewell in installments

With this relegation, Kopa's career, who from then on only intended to play in the traditional Reims team, ended: on April 29, 1967, he scored his last first division, which meant the 1-0 final result against US Valenciennes , and on June 10, 1967, in the 1-1 draw against Olympique Nîmes , almost 12,000 spectators said goodbye to their little "Napoléon" at the Stade Vélodrome Auguste-Delaune .

But he came back a year and a half later. For December 15, 1968, the traditional teams of Racing Paris and Stade Reims had arranged a meeting in the Paris Prinzenparkstadion . Since the first teams of the two clubs - Stade was second, Racing was even only an amateur league team - were supposed to meet in the French Cup this week , a double event was organized in which the official cup match was scheduled as a prelude. The eleven of the second division were plagued by injury-related personnel worries, which is why Raymond Kopa, who still had a professional license, took his place on the bench as a “last reserve”. In fact, he had to replace a player from the 22nd minute of the game, scored the 2-0 shortly afterwards and celebrated the victory with “his” team at the final whistle. The 37-year-old then played the traditional team's friendly game and scored two more goals.

Almost exactly ten years earlier to the day, the ex-national player and journalist Gabriel Hanot had said in his laudation on Kopa:

“His true position is neither that of a wing nor a half-forward, nor that of a center forward: it has yet to be invented. He made them for himself; it is that of an attacker who does not always play at the forefront but is always involved in the attacks that he inspires, that he directs and that he helps to complete. ... He is at the same time ... in the center of the action and beyond the control of his opponents. "

In the 1970/71 season Kopa was even once again in Reims' first division squad - but only on paper, so that the club, battered by financial problems, could meet the association requirement to report at least eleven professional players. After all, he played a few friendlies in this circle. In 1973, Paris Saint-Germain FC's sporting director Just Fontaine asked if the almost 42-year-old Kopa was ready to join the team in the second division. This refused because this could not be reconciled with his business, but played a friendly game with the team on August 29, 1973 in Saumur and scored three goals against the local amateur club.

International assignments

With the Équipe Tricolore

After Raymond Kopa took on French citizenship at the end of 1951, he made his first appearance in the B national team in April 1952 in a 1-0 win against Saarland . A month later, he contributed two goals to the Espoirs 7-1 victory over the English junior team.

On October 5, 1952, he made his debut in the 3-1 win against Germany , also in the national team and celebrated an "excellent debut" in the center forward position, in which the German coach Herberger was forced to stand next to him during the first half Center runner Liebrich with Posipal to assign a second opponent. Kopa eluded this through frequent castling with his strike partners Cisowski and Ujlaki . By November 11, 1962 (2: 3 against Hungary) he played 45 international matches for the French national team and scored 18 goals. However, the number of assists he made was significantly greater. In six of the games he was also the Bleus captain . At the World Championships in 1954 and 1958 , he completed eight games in which he scored four goals. His greatest success with the national team was 3rd place at the World Cup in Sweden after a 6-3 win against Germany. There he was then - despite the "world championship" competition of Didi , Vavá , Pelé or Garrincha  - voted best player of the tournament and at the end of the year European Footballer of the Year and again the French "Master of Masters".

Between February 1956 and October 1959 he was missing in 18 international matches; On the one hand, this was due to the fact that the French association also generally did not take players playing abroad into account, and on the other hand, because of Real Madrid's refusal to release it. Only at the World Cup tournament in Sweden did Sélectionneur Paul Nicolas and Albert Batteux, who had also been national coach since 1955, manage to “kick him off” - but only after the French federation had insured him against the risk of accidents and injuries. In mid-1960 he missed five more international matches due to an injury, including the finals at the first ever European Championship .

His outstanding performance in the six games of the 1958 World Cup also aroused admiration outside of France. Friedebert Becker , editor of the German kicker , praised, for example, the "lively Kopa", one of the "best storm conductors", "unselfishly puts his arts in the service of the team" and "gets the whirlwind combinations of the French going". Despite his "quick short passes" and "wonderful dribbling", he said he was not too bad to "help out at the back" or to operate "far back as a connector ", with which he "often disrupted the [German] defense". Becker rumored that “many called the inner trio Fontaine – Kopa – Piantoni the best of the whole world championship” and quoted striker Fontaine as saying “I owe Raymond Kopa for what I have become. He took all my inhibitions away, ... taught me tricks and combination moves ”. After the semi-final against Brazil, Willy Meisl certified Kopa as having “general vision and football virtuosity”.

In addition, two games from 1955 are often counted among Kopa's best for the Équipe Tricolore , in which he directed particularly masterfully: the 1-0 against England on May 15, in which he also scored the goal of the day, and more the 2-1 victory in Spain on March 17th in front of 125,000 spectators, also with a Kopa goal and the preparatory work for the winning goal, after which he was carried off the shoulders of enthusiastic French and Spanish spectators and for which he was named "Napoléon of football ”. He himself said about this encounter: "Whatever I tried in this game, I succeeded". Of his late international matches, the one against England on October 3, 1962 in Sheffield (final score 1: 1) is particularly outstanding; the Daily Express wrote about it: "Ray Kopa walked off the Hillsborough lawn in the flash of the photographers and to the applause of the 36,000 spectators."

Against national teams from the German-speaking area, Raymond Kopa can show a good record; eight wins were matched by only one loss and he has also scored one goal against each of those teams. The games in detail:

against Germany * 05.10.1952 H 3: 1000 16.10.1954 0A 03: 1 06/28/1958 S 6: 3 (1 goal)000 against Switzerland 11/11/1953 0H 02: 4 09.10.1955 A 2: 1 (1 goal)000

against Austria October 19, 1952 0A 02: 1 13.12.1959 0H 05: 2 03/27/1960 A 4: 2 (1 goal)000 against Luxembourg 09/20/1953 A 6: 1 (1 goal)000

* no game against the GDR ; H = game in France, A = game against opponent, S = game in Sweden (World Cup); Results always from a French point of view

On the other hand, his particularly frequent appearances with France against Belgium were particularly unsuccessful in terms of the end result:

December 25, 1952 0H 00: 1 05/30/1954 A 3: 3 (1 goal)000 11/11/1954 0H 02: 2 (2 goals) December 25, 1955 0A 01: 2

02/28/1960 A 0: 1000 03/15/1961 H 1: 1000 18.10.1961 0A 00: 3

In the 2-2 in Warsaw against Poland (September 1960) Kopa was missing, but was there in the 1: 3 in Paris (April 1962); as team captain, he exchanged pennants with his Polish counterpart before kick-off. In his autobiographies he doesn't mention this game at all.

Despite his undeniable achievements, in the early years he was repeatedly criticized publicly as “too small, too playful, too selfish”, even in his national dress, after the 0-1 win against Yugoslavia at the 1954 World Cup, even by the association officials Gaston Barreau and Jean Rigal : “ Kopa and Glovacki lost a game they could have won ”. How close hero worship and xenophobic resentment were at this point in time was shown by a viewer's call after this game: “Kopaszewski, go back to the mine! You belong there! ”As early as 1952, on the occasion of an international match in Dublin , he and the national team were faced with the allegation made public on handouts in the Irish press and at Dalymount Park stadium that this was not a French team at all, but with all their Italians , Hungary and Poland a " Foreign Legion ".
For Goldblatt it is a paradox that the political left in France admired him for his individualism, while the middle-class and right-wing forces reviled him for precisely that. However, even Kopa's critics had to join in the eulogies about his art of playing, as long as he was playing successfully, in order not to "spoil himself with a public that was caught up in his attractive game".

Coupe Latine and European Champion Clubs' Cup

The Coupe Latine , a regional forerunner of the European Cup competitions in which the respective champions from Italy, Spain, Portugal and France took part, was the second international stage after the national team on which Raymond Kopa could show his qualities. On his first appearance - in Portugal in 1953 - he scored the winning goal in a 2-1 win over Valencia CF and two goals in a 3-0 final against AC Milan . Two years later, this time in their own country, Reims initially met AC Milan again. This floodlit match on June 22, 1955 went down in the annals as the “ Prinzenpark Marathon”: Glovacki scored the 3-2 winner only after midnight, in the 139th minute of the game. On the day after next, L'Équipe headlined : "Kopa steered the game with extraordinary brio". However, the encounter had cost so much strength that three days later Real Madrid won the final 2-0 with relatively no problems.

Also in Kopa's third participation (1957 in Spain), this time wearing Real Madrid, a 5-1 win over AC Milan was again a clear win. In the final win against Benfica Lisbon (1-0) Kopa was denied a goal, but he won this trophy for the second time and is the only player to have stood in three Coupe Latine finals.

He took part in the European Champion Clubs' Cup three times with Reims and Madrid: between 1955 and 1959 annually, and also in 1960/61 and 1962/63. He won this “European club football crown” three times and was also in the final of the first ever competition (3: 4 against Real Madrid). In this final Madrid goalkeeper Alonso initially prevented Reims' possibly decisive 3-0 lead when he steered a spectacular long-range shot from Kopas with his fingertips around the post; In the second half, a Kopa free kick prepared the Rémois 3-2 through Hidalgo . Overall, Kopa played 34 games at this level between September 1955 and March 1963 and scored eight goals, including 22 appearances (six hits) for Real and 12 games (two goals) for Stade. In the finals he did not score a goal, but his assists also opened up numerous opportunities for his teammates here.

Five games at this level have made a particular contribution to its reputation. In the encounter between Stade Reims on December 28, 1955 at MTK Budapest FC , which at the time competed under the name Vörös Lobogó (Red Banner) , the 24-year-old proved to be absolutely equal to his counterpart, the Hungarian world-class player Nándor Hidegkuti . After the 4: 2 in the first leg, Kopa implemented Batteux's offensive concept almost perfectly: after 52 minutes the guests were leading 4: 1 (final score 4: 4). A year later, now in Real Madrid's dress, he scored the 2-0 goal in the decisive game against Rapid Vienna (December 13, 1956), which meant the decision in the hard-fought game. Against Manchester United he scored the 1-0 goal in the second leg at Old Trafford (April 25, 1957, final score 2-2), which paved Madrid's way into the final. In the quarter-finals of 1957/58 against Sevilla FC (January 23, 1958) he was a brilliant director and, through his two goals, played a key role in Real’s 8-0 victory. Such a "double pack", which is relatively rare in his professional career, also crowned one of his last European Cup appearances on November 14, 1962 at Reims' 5-0 over Austria Vienna ; despite his personal difficulties at the time, this game is considered a

"The culmination of his European career ... Kopa as a playmaker, frontline fighter and formidable center forward who scored two goals full of rage and with this game perhaps more than any other contributed to his unforgettable legend."

International friendlies

Friendship encounters between top teams and games with the participation of a world or continental selection met with a great response in the first two post-war decades; In the “childhood years of television”, they were often the only way for football fans to see famous teams and legendary players for over 90 minutes and not just in the snippets of seconds at the cinema newsreels . These games - when Stade Reims acted as host, they played them regularly in Paris - were almost always sold out. In addition to two appearances in Europe and the world eleven (1955 and 1963, both against England), Raymond Kopa also played a large number of such "show games" with Reims and Madrid, two of which are particularly memorable.

In March 1953, one month after the flood of the century that hit large parts of Holland, Dutch professionals from abroad competed in a charity match against a French national team: "Kopa & Co." lost 2-1 to the Dutch in front of 40,000 spectators in the Prinzenpark in Paris , in whose ranks there was another Rémois, Bram Appel . This help for the flood victims is still remembered today by many Dutch people as the so-called Watersnoodwedstrijd . In November 1954 a combination Racing Paris / Stade Reims played against Dynamo Moscow at the same place . The Soviet football was at that time in Western Europe as a kind of tip, and Kopa failed Dynamos goalkeeper Yashin to overcome.

Stade Reims and Real Madrid maintain this custom of friendly matches, which began in the 1950s and has since survived, up to the present day and meet once a year if the schedule allows it. An episode from the 1956/57 season, when the Stade de Reims - without the protagonist who was already playing in Madrid - undertook a four-week tour of Southeast Asia, made it clear that Kopa was the epitome of gaming culture in footballing developing countries: in the line-ups of the opposing teams there were consistently several players who had adopted the stage name Kopa.

Life after an active football career

As early as 1954, Kopa began to market its name for products, mainly sporting goods and casual wear. Around 1960 he ran a newsagents and tobacco shop and became co-owner of a hotel in Reims. He later created his own brand for sporting goods and brought a number of his former teammates as employees into this Groupe Kopa , under whose roof a number of factories and retail stores were united. He took care of product development and financing, and regularly visited the factories and shops personally - "with the same seriousness, the same standards and perfectionism as during my career".

Raymond Kopa (back row, 4th from right) at an event in Reims in 2006. To the right of him, Just Fontaine and Claude Prosdocimi.

At the end of 1968 Albert Batteux persuaded him to run for the Federal Council of the French Football Association . Kopa was elected, but resigned from this position in July 1969 after his and Michel Hidalgo's attempt to bring Batteux back as national coach failed. In addition, he was not made for committee work: "I love football - if I can play it". He continued to do this with Stade's (and later Angers') traditional team until 2001. Of his former Reims teammates, he has maintained contact with Paul Sinibaldi , Dominique Colonna and Just Fontaine in particular over the decades ; He describes Fontaine as his "friend and accomplice, ... an instinctive footballer like myself", with his spontaneity and extrovertedness "the diametrically opposite character".

Raymond Kopa (2005)

In 1971, Raymond Kopa settled in Angers , where he lived until the end for part of the year; the other he spent near Ajaccio in Corsica . He accompanied the World Championships in 1978, 1982 and 1986 as a commentator for France Inter and Radio Monte Carlo . In 1985, he, who had kept himself fit by playing tennis for many years , took part in the Paris-Dakar rally as a co-driver of Étienne Smulovici (65th place overall), giving him new, personally important impressions. He is critical of the current development of his sport:

“Too much is happening in midfield ... with only one or two strikers left ... You have to wait a long time for a goal, and that is the same everywhere. Today too fast is played, [often at the expense of] accuracy. ... The current systems are too tight a corset for players; if they are not given a certain amount of freedom, they cannot develop. If we want young people who make the difference: let them play, dribble and decide for themselves. "

In 1991 he retired from his company; twelve years later - a present from his friends for their golden wedding anniversary  - he traveled for the first time to the country from which the Kopaszewskis had emigrated three generations earlier. He had only been there once before, on the occasion of a friendly with Stade Reims. His poor Polish pronunciation and his poor vocabulary had prompted journalists there to comment that Kopa had suppressed his origins - and he contradicted this only weakly: “I haven't forgotten anything, I knew little about it”. Obviously, his personal relationship with these family roots was not very close; Kopa commented on the hint of a teammate during the return flight of the national team from Moscow in October 1955 that they were crossing Poland with the words "Poland was foreign to me ... I had only one fatherland: France." He also dedicated his most recent autobiography to that Travel from 2003 just a print page, which he introduces with the laconic statement "I was not particularly enthusiastic and would rather have gone to Rome for a week ". In it he deals mainly with the spontaneous invitation from the French ambassador in Warsaw and closes with the words: "I am proud to have ... made my contribution to some of the most beautiful pages in the history of French football". After all, on November 19, 2010, at the invitation of the FFF, he carried out the symbolic kick-off at the friendly between the French and the Polish women's national team .

On the occasion of his death, France Football dedicated an eight-page homage to Raymond Kopa, “one of the greatest French football players of all time” . At the suggestion of the city council of Angers, the local Stade Jean-Bouin was renamed Stade Raymond-Kopa at the end of March 2017 . Real Madrid haven't forgotten him either. At the 2017 Ballon d'Or award ceremony , club representatives presented Kopa's widow with a replica of the jersey he wore there 60 years ago. Since such an original could no longer be found, it was made as a one-off piece, even twice after it was discovered that the club's coat of arms did not exactly match the version that Real had at the end of the 1950s.

Palmarès

With his clubs

• Winner of the European Champion Clubs' Cup : 1957, 1958, 1959 (with Madrid; also finalist 1956 with Reims)
• Coupe Latine winners : 1953 (with Reims), 1957 (with Madrid); also finalist 1955 (with Reims)
• French champion : 1953, 1955, 1960, 1962
• Spanish champion : 1957, 1958
• Coupe Charles Drago winner : 1954
• 346 games (75 goals) in France's Division 1 , 79 games (24 goals) in Spain's Primera División , 116 games (21 goals) for Angers and Reims in France's Division 2
• 34 games (8 goals) in the European championship, 22 (6) for Madrid and 12 (2) for Reims

As a national player

• 45 international caps (18 goals)
• World Cup participant in 1954 and 1958
• 3rd place at the World Cup in 1958 and award as the best player in this tournament

Other awards

• Inclusion in the list of the world's best footballers of the 20th century, the FIFA 100
• Best European player (“ Goldener Fußball ”) 1958, second in 1959, third in 1956 and 1957, sixth in 1960, eleventh in 1962 - until 2011 the only player to rank in the top three four times in a row
• Third best French footballer of the century (elected by l'Équipe in 2000) or best player of the post-war period (readers' vote in France Football, end of 1956)
• Three times athlete or footballer of the year in France (1955 and 1958 " Champion des champions ", 1959/60 " Étoile d'Or ")
• Awarded the " UEFA President's Prize" (2010) as a "legendary player"
• Knight (since 1970) or officer (since 2007) of the Legion of Honor
• Namesake of streets (e.g. in Cholet and Les Herbiers ) and sports facilities (a stadium and a sports hall in Lille and, posthumously, the first division stadium in Angers )
• Honorary President of Stade Reims

literature

Autobiographies

• Raymond Kopa (with the assistance of Patrice Burchkalter): Le Kopa. Jacob-Duvernet, Paris 2010 (album Hommage du Sport), ISBN 978-2-84724-274-4 (with a foreword by Pelé)
• Raymond Kopa (with the assistance of Patrice Burchkalter): Kopa. Jacob-Duvernet, Paris 2006 ISBN 2-84724-107-8 (with a foreword by Zinédine Zidane)
• Raymond Kopa (with the assistance of Paul Katz): Mon football. Calmann-Lévy, Paris 1972
• Raymond Kopa: Mes matches et ma vie. Pierre Horay, Paris 1958 (with a foreword by Albert Batteux)

Representations

• Friedebert Becker (Ed.): Football World Cup 1958. Copress, Munich 1958 (licensed edition for Bertelsmann Lesering)
• Hans Blickensdörfer : A ball flies around the world. Union, Stuttgart 1965, 1969 ³
• 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
• Gérard Ejnès / L'Équipe: La belle histoire. L'équipe de France de football. L'Équipe, Issy-les-Moulineaux 2004 ISBN 2-9519605-3-0
• Gérard Ejnès / L'Équipe: 50 ans de Coupes d'Europe. L'Équipe, Issy-les-Moulineaux 2005 ISBN 2-9519605-9-X
• L'Équipe (Ed.): Stade de Reims. Un club à la Une. L'Équipe, Issy-les-Moulineaux 2006 ISBN 2-915535-41-8 (cassette with 20 facsimiles of historical title pages and an accompanying volume)
• Just Fontaine (with the collaboration of Jean-Pierre Bonenfant): Mes 13 vérités sur le foot. Solar, Paris 2006 ISBN 2-263-04107-9
• David Goldblatt: The ball is round. A global history of football. Viking / Penguin, London 2006 ISBN 0-670-91480-0
• Pascal Grégoire-Boutreau / Tony Verbicaro: Stade de Reims - une histoire sans fin. Cahiers intempestifs, Saint-Étienne 2001 ISBN 2-911698-21-5
• Michel Hidalgo (with the collaboration of Patrice Burchkalter): Le temps des bleus. Mémoires. Jacob-Duvernet, Paris 2007 ISBN 978-2-84724-146-4
• Paul Hurseau / Jacques Verhaeghe: Les immortels du football nordiste. Alan Sutton, Saint-Cyr-sur-Loire 2003 ISBN 2-84253-867-6
• Pierre Lanfranchi / Alfred Wahl : The Immigrant as Hero: Kopa, Mekloufi and French Football. in: The International Journal of the History of Sport, Vol. XIII, No. 1, March 1996, pp. 114-127
• Klaus Leger: Just like Real Madrid once did. The history of the European Cup 1955–1964. AGON, Kassel o. J. [2003] ISBN 3-89784-211-4
• Lucien Perpère / Victor Sinet / Louis Tanguy: Reims de nos amours. 1931/1981 - 50 ans de Stade de Reims. Alphabet Cube, Reims 1981
• Jean-Philippe Rethacker / Jacques Thibert: La fabuleuse histoire du football. Minerva, Genève 2003 ² ISBN 978-2-8307-0661-1 (with a foreword by Albert Batteux; first published 1974, revised new edition 1996)
• Jean Riverain / Claude Quesniaux: Kopa, Coppi… et autres champions. Editions GP, Paris 1961
• Matthias Weinrich: The European Cup. 1955 to 1974. AGON, Kassel o. J. [2007], ISBN 978-3-89784-252-6

Movies

• Allez le Stade. 1950–1962, une passion Rémoise. (53 minutes) and Batteux, l'homme du match. (51 minutes) - both by Jules-César Muracciole, 2003; as DVD by Éditions Montparnasse, 2006

Web links

Commons : Raymond Kopa  - collection of images, videos and audio files

• Raymond Kopa in the database of National-Football-Teams.com (English)
• Data sheet with photo on the website of the French Football Association (French)
• Laudation by Gabriel Hanot in France Football on the occasion of the 1958 Ballon d'Or award ceremony with photos (French)
• Game scenes from the 1950s and a more recent interview with Kopa on Youtube.com (2:20 min., Comment in Spanish)
• History of Stade Reims 1945–1963 (with Kopa photo in a game scene) (French)
• Page of the Reims "alumni" with statistics ( memento of February 16, 2008 in the Internet Archive ) and photos ( memento of February 16, 2008 in the Internet Archive ) (French)
• Kopa photo from 2006

Above links: Sighted on June 10, 2008

Remarks

1. ↑ See, for example, Goldblatt, p. 418; Just Fontaine: Reprise de volée. Solar, supra, 1970, pp. 134f. - Kopa's height is sometimes given as 1.69 m.
2. ↑ This term appears for the first time in a Daily Express article by the journalist Desmond Hackett after Kopa's appearance with the French national team in Madrid (March 17, 1955, 2-1 against Spain ): “I have the best player in the world, Napoléon of football ”. - Kopa 2006, p. 105; Ejnès / L'Équipe 2004, p. 86; Chaumier, p. 177; Weinrich, p. 58. - Three biographies appeared in Spain that mention this designation in the book title, namely José Luis de Echarri: Kopa. El Napoleon del futbol. Prensa Gráfica, Madrid 1958, a book of the same name by Félix Martialay (volume 16 of the series Enciclopedia de los Deportes , Arpem, Granada 1958) and NN: Kopa, El Napoléon del Reims. El Marca, Madrid 1963. Kopa himself found this nickname “somewhat pompous” - Kopa 1972, p. 102
3. ^ Goldblatt, pp. 405 and 419; likewise Lanfranchi / Wahl, p. 114, who at the same time describe this opportunity for advancement as a “myth” and Kopa as someone who “gladly fulfilled this role model” (pp. 117–118).
4. ↑ Kopa 1972, pp. 8 and 14
5. ↑ Kopa himself refers to his Polish-born relatives by their French-speaking first names, his father, for example, as François - Kopa 2006, p. 17
6. ↑ Riverain / Quesniaux, pp. 10/11; for the location of the coal basin in northern France, see this map
7. ↑ Kopa 1958, p. 21; Kopa 1972, p. 23; Kopa 2006, p. 19f.
8. ↑ Kopa characterizes himself for this period (1939/40) with the words "Je suis haut comme trois pommes, mais j'ai déjà l'âme d'un chef", that is, as "Dreikäsehoch" (literally "Dreikäsehoch" in French) the heart of a leader ”: - Kopa 2006, p. 20
9. ↑ Riverain / Quesniaux, p. 11
10. ↑ Kopa's birthplace now bears a commemorative plaque that was affixed in March 2009 in his presence - see this article ( Memento of the original from January 13, 2010 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. from the Écho du Pas-de-Calais . 
11. ↑ Kopa 2006, pp. 22-23
12. ↑ "À notre manière, nous avions presque fait un acte de Résistance, non?" (Kopa 1972, p. 29.)
13. ↑ Kopa 2006, p. 23ff .; similar to Riverain / Quesniaux, p. 11; in addition, his parents could not have raised the required tuition fee - Kopa 1958, p.
14. ↑ Kopa 2006, p. 28
15. ↑ Kopa 2006, p. 33; "Schwarzfresse" (gueule noire) is a colloquial coarse term for miners.
16. ↑ In the entire literature used for this article, there are only three photos that show him headed: In the 1958 World Cup semi-finals, he at least skipped the Brazilian goalkeeper Gilmar (Ejnès / L'Équipe 2004, p. 97; also in Kopa 2006, behind p. 128; the same scene from a different angle in Delaunay / de Ryswick / Cornu, p. 222/223). Also a “pike header” in Real Madrid's dress, in Kopa 1958, before p. 97.
17. ↑ Both Tison quotations from Riverain / Quesniaux, p. 21-
18. ↑ Gérard Dhesse: Centenaire US Nœux. Self-published, Nœux-les-Mines o. J. [2010, pages not numbered], 49th page; a team photo from the 1948/49 season can be found on page 55.
19. ↑ Kopa 2006, p. 43; Kopa 1958, p. 33
20. ↑ Riverain / Quesniaux, p. 26f .; Kopa 1972, pp. 32–34 - The winner of the 1949 Concours du jeune footballeur was Jean Saupin, who was under contract with Kopa at SCO Angers in 1949/50, but only made 15 appearances in Division 1 in his subsequent career ( 1953/54 at Stade Français Paris  - see Stéphane Boisson / Raoul Vian: Il était une fois le Championnat de France de Football. Tous les joueurs de la première division de 1948/49 à 2003/04. Neofoot, Saint-Thibault o. J.). More information about the 1949 competition under Concours du jeune footballeur 1949 .
21. ↑ Kopa 2006, p. 41
22. ↑ Kopa 1972, pp. 36-39
23. ↑ Hurseau / Verhaeghe, p. 74 - Henno signed Stephan Walzak instead, who only made 81 first division appearances for Lille and Metz between 1954 and 1962 (Walzak's data from Boisson / Vian)
24. ^ Marion Fontaine: Le Racing Club de Lens et les "Gueules Noires". Essai d'histoire sociale. Les Indes savantes, Paris 2010, ISBN 978-2-84654-248-7 , p. 152
25. ↑ Kopa 2006, pp. 44-47
26. ↑ Kopa 2006, p. 49, quotes Camille Cottin with the words "Kopa ... sonne bien et se retient mieux" ("sounds good and is easier to remember"). According to Leger, p. 59, FIFA still used Kopa under its official name at the 1954 World Cup. His French player pass for the 1955/56 season is also made out on “KOPASZEWSKI Raymond” (see the illustration in Fédération Française de Football (ed.): 100 dates, histoires, objets du football français. Tana, o. O. 2011, ISBN 978-2-84567-701-2 , p. 90). A newspaper clipping with a team photo from the 1949/50 season (Kopa: 3rd from the left in the front row) and a reference to this renaming can be found under Archived Copy ( Memento of the original from April 28, 2015 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link became automatic used and not yet tested. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. . 
27. ↑ Riverain / Quesniaux, p. 41
28. ↑ "ma première cagnotte", literally translated as "Spiel (geld) kasse" - Kopa 2006, p. 50; Kopa 1972, p. 41
29. ↑ Kopa 2006, pp. 51/52; Kopa 1958, p. 58
30. ↑ Kopa 1972, pp. 110 and 153
31. ^ "Espèce de petit révolutionnaire" (Kopa 1972, p. 49).
32. ↑ Kopa 2006, pp. 53-55
33. ↑ Kopa 1958, p. 72ff.
34. ↑ Bourrigault played 230 first division games for SCO Angers and Stade Rennais UC in the following years  - data according to Boisson / Vian
35. ↑ July 28, 1953; Groomsmen were Camille Cottin and Albert Batteux - Kopa 1958, p. 87 and photo before p. 17
36. ↑ Kopa 1972, p. 55
37. ↑ Kopa 1958, pp. 101f. - Half a century later, however, Kopa no longer seemed so sure, but asked: "What arguments might Bébert have put forward?" (Kopa 2006, p. 67.)
38. ↑ ^{a b} Unless otherwise stated, all information on match dates, team lineups, results, etc. Ä. von Stade Reims in this chapter on the statistical analysis of the detailed work of Grégoire-Boutreau / Verbicaro.
39. ↑ Kopa 1958, p. 107
40. ↑ Average age at the beginning of the season (August 26, 1951) calculated for the 16 of the 20 players who played this year and whose exact date of birth is known.
41. ↑ Kopa 2006, pp. 73-74; similarly also Ejnès / L'Équipe 2004, p. 80; Fontaine, p. 73.
42. ↑ Fontaine, p. 74; Weinrich, p. 58
43. ↑ Fontaine, p. 190; In Division 1 , the audience revenue was shared between the two teams in a ratio of 60:40 until 1962, and Reims was able to charge high amounts for friendly games due to its attractive style of play. In 1951/52, in the domestic Stade Vélodrome Auguste-Delaune , an average of only 7,160 visitors paid admission, despite being fourth in the table, compared to 11,100 in the 17 away games.
44. ↑ Kopa 2006, pp. 74f.
45. ↑ for example Kopa's teammate between 1954 and 1956, the later national coach Michel Hidalgo - Hidalgo, p. 38f .; Perpère / Sinet / Tanguy, p. 96; similar to Rethacker / Thibert, p. 225, who even refer to Kopa in a chapter heading as “fils de Batteux” (“Batteux 'son”).
46. ↑ Kopa 2006, p. 69; his first book is dedicated to Batteux ("à Albert"), but he has siezt it for life - Kopa 1958, 2nd cover sheet; Hidalgo, p. 39
47. ↑ Kopa 2006, p. 91f.
48. ↑ Perpère / Sinet / Tanguy, p. 100; Grégoire-Boutreau / Verbicaro, p. 271
49. ↑ Grégoire-Boutreau / Verbicaro, p. 114; Kopa himself also rated the interaction with Léon Glovacki a bit better (“perfect understanding”) than that with Just Fontaine. - Kopa 1972, pp. 80–82 and 213, as well as in his obituary on the occasion of Glovacki's death in September 2009: “I understood myself blindly with him” ( Memento of the original from September 14, 2009 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and not yet tested. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. . 
50. ↑ Kopa 1972, p. 99f .; together with him u. a. Ujlaki and his club mate Jacquet quit their duties.
51. ↑ Kopa 1958, p. 41 and photo before p. 129; Ejnès / L'Équipe 2005, p. 307; Delaunay / de Ryswick / Cornu, p. 212; He received this award (“Champion des champions”) again in 1958 - Kopa 2006, p. 210
52. ↑ The other four footballers were Michel Platini (1977 and 1984), Alain Giresse (1982) and Zinédine Zidane (1998).
53. ^ Title page of l'Équipe from June 13, 1956, in L'Équipe, sheet 8
54. ↑ Contract negotiations according to Kopa 1972, p. 104, and Kopa 2006, p. 108f. or 115; Readers' vote according to France Football: 60 ans. La legend du football. (Supplement to the September 25, 2007 edition), p. 18. - Incidentally, Kopa was not the first Frenchman at Real: Louis Hon (1950–1953, as a professional) and René Petit (before and during the First World War, as an amateur) played with the Madrilenians before him.
55. ↑ According to Leger, p. 60, Di Stefano acted according to the motto "Let no gods play next to me".
56. ↑ Weinrich, p. 24
57. ^ Quote from France Football from January 29, 2008, p. 43
58. ^ "Ni Pelé ni Puskas n'eurent sur leur équipe l'emprise d'un Di Stefano" - Kopa 1972, pp. 208/209
59. ↑ Kopa 2006, pp. 123-128; Kopa 1972, pp. 119-122
60. ↑ Riverain / Quesniaux, pp. 62/63
61. ↑ Kopa 2006, pp. 150f.
62. ↑ so Kopa himself in 2003 in one of his statements in the film "Allez le Stade"
63. ↑ Blickensdörfer, p. 136; Grégoire-Boutreau / Verbicaro, p. 106; According to Delaunay / de Ryswick / Cornu, p. 235, an advertising contract with this beverage producer was even the main reason for his return, while Riverain / Quesniaux, p. 60, cite that being able to work under Batteux again was a major motivation for him. Kopa himself, who had bought a house near Angers around the turn of the year 1957/58, simply remarked: “I was going back home”. - Kopa 1972, p. 150; Kopa 1958, pp. 189f.
64. ↑ Weinrich, p. 80
65. ^ Quote from Albert Batteux in one of his statements in the film "Allez le Stade"; the regular formation (in brackets the number of league games and goals this season) was Colonna (32) - Wendling (34), Rodzik (31/1) - Siatka (35/3), Jonquet (34), Leblond (34/1 ) - Muller (38/13), Kopa (36/14), Fontaine (28/28), Piantoni (26/18), Vincent (37/14) and Bérard  (21/10).
66. ↑ Reims had lost 2-0 in England, but only made it 3-2 in Paris on November 30, 1960. - Leger, p. 77.
67. ↑ Kopa 1972, pp. 176-179; Kopa 2006, pp. 167-169
68. ↑ With regard to the cause of his son's death, other publications usually speak of leukemia . The couple also have two daughters, Nadine (* 1954) and Sophie (* 1963) - Kopa 1972, pp. 7 and 113. Kopa has completely transferred the copyright and royalties from his most recent biography to the cancer research center Institut Gustave-Roussy in Villejuif - Kopa 2006 , 2nd cover sheet.
69. ↑ At that time, there was still an association committee in France whose one to three members selected (hence the name Sélectionneurs ) which players were appointed to and used in an international match. It was not until July 1964 that these decisions also fell within the exclusive competence of the national coach; Henri Guérin was the first coach to benefit from this new regulation.
70. ↑ Verriest had released Kopa from participating in the training camp so that he could take care of the medical care of his son, but accused him of poor attitude after the game in front of the assembled press: “Raymond n'a plus l'esprit pour jouer en équipe de France . … Les qualités du joueur ne sont pas en cause, mais sa mentalité ”(“ Kopa's playful qualities are out of the question, but he lacks the national team spirit ”). - Grégoire-Boutreau / Verbicaro, p. 126; similar to Delaunay / de Ryswick / Cornu, p. 247; Rethacker / Thibert, p. 352
71. ↑ Kopa 2006, pp. 159-166; Rethacker / Thibert, p. 373
72. ↑ for example Jacques Zissel: Kopa: Sélectionné dans l'équipe du monde - discuté dans l'équipe de France. In: La Croix, September 19, 1963.
73. ↑ ^{a b c d} Chaumier, p. 177f.
74. ↑ Hidalgo, p. 56; Delaunay / de Ryswick / Cornu, p. 248; Rethacker / Thibert, p. 361
75. ↑ Lanfranchi / Wahl, pp. 118/119
76. ^ The occasion was the 100th anniversary of the Football Association  - Delaunay / de Ryswick / Cornu, p. 248
77. ↑ Kopa 1972, p. 183; Kopa 2006, p. 175; Grégoire-Boutreau / Verbicaro, p. 131
78. ↑ "Bob" Jonquet had worn the red and white dress in 502 first division games between 1946 and 1960, won all titles and stood in all the finals that the club had reached.
79. ↑ Prosdocimi had also played in the Reimser Profielf in the first half of the 1950s, but only in a total of 13 league games; in seven of them (late 1953 / early 1954) he stood on the lawn with Kopa. In 1964 he coached Reims' junior team to win the Coupe Gambardella , the French youth championship.
80. ↑ Grégoire-Boutreau / Verbicaro, p. 135; Kopa himself presented this as a misunderstanding and regretted the end of a friendship. - Kopa 1972, pp. 191-198; Kopa 2006, pp. 176-179. Claude Prosdocimi indicated that Kopa was at least not entirely uninvolved in Jonquet's release (interview with Wwwurm on October 18, 2007).
81. ↑ Grégoire-Boutreau / Verbicaro, pp. 139/140; Kopa 1972, p. 188
82. ^ “Sa vraie place n'est pas celle d'un ailier ni d'un intérieur, ni même d'un avant-center: elle est à créer; il l'a créée pour son compte; elle est celle d'un attaquant qui n'est pas toujours de pointe, mais reste intégré à l'attaque qu'il inspire, oriente et sert à la perfection. … Il veille à se trouver à la fois… en plein center de l'action, et néanmoins hors de la surveillance immédiate des opposants. ”- Ballon d'Or 1958
83. ↑ Perpère / Sinet / Tanguy, p. 182
84. ↑ 1970/71 after Grégoire-Boutreau / Verbicaro, p. 146; 1973/74 based on France Football of July 24, 1973, p. 16, and of September 4, 1973, p. 25
85. ↑ Kopa 2006, p. 86 - as a 20-year-old and not, as Skrentny writes, already at 18 - Werner Skrentny: Soccer World Cup 1958 Sweden. AGON, Kassel 2002 ISBN 3-89784-192-4 , p. 100
86. ↑ Kopa 2006, pp. 79 and 86; as espoirs ("bearers of hope") the teams of the juniors (today: U-23 players) in France are still called at the beginning of the 21st century.
87. ↑ Delaunay / de Ryswick / Cornu, p. 201; similar to Leger, p. 59, Ejnès / L'Équipe 2004, p. 80
88. ↑ Unless otherwise stated, all information on match dates, team lineups, results, etc. Ä. the national team in this article on Ejnès / L'Équipe 2004, pp. 80–87, 316–322, 368/369, 374 and 379–383
89. ↑ According to the archive link ( memento of the original from October 14, 2007 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. an international jury made this choice; similarly also Fontaine, p. 80. 
90. ↑ Kopa 2006, p. 210
91. ^ Michel Drucker / Jean-Paul Ollivier: Onze hommes en Suède. Kopa, Piantoni, Fontaine et les autres. Edition ° 1, Paris 1988, ISBN 2-86391-293-3 , pp. 14 and 24
92. ↑ Becker, p. 141
93. ↑ Quotations from Becker, pp. 14, 141, 165, 242, 244, 278, 282 and 284
94. ↑ Article France outdid itself - but not Brazil! from the kicker of June 30, 1958, p. 14, facsimile in Frank Steffan (Ed.): So ein Tag. The match reports of all World Cup games of the German national soccer team. Ed. Steffan, Cologne 1994 ISBN 3-923838-04-2
95. ↑ Grégoire-Boutreau / Verbicaro, p. 75; Delaunay / de Ryswick / Cornu, p. 211 - therein on p. 207 also a photo of the scene after the Spain game, also in Kopa 1958, after p. 96.
96. ↑ Riverain / Quesniaux, p. 56
97. ↑ Rethacker / Thibert, p. 350f.
98. ↑ Ejnès / L'Équipe 2004, pp. 80/81
99. ↑ L'Équipe article of June 17, 1954, in Ejnès / L'Équipe 2004, p. 81
100. ↑ Kopa 2006, p. 97; Goldblatt, p. 419 - Both sources rate this acclamation not only as a “normal” reaction of a disappointed fan, but also ascribe at least subliminal xenophobia to it, because since 1949 the player has only been known as Kopa in the French media. By addressing him as Kopaszewski, this viewer took up the stereotype that Polish citizens in France should primarily work as “guest workers” in the mining industry. According to Riverain / Quesniaux, p. 55, however, the viewer had dubbed him "Kopa".
101. ↑ Kopa 2006, pp. 87-90; Excerpts from newspaper articles in Riverain / Quesniaux, pp. 46/47, and Kopa 1958, pp. 128f.
102. ↑ Goldblatt, p. 418, cites the PCF- affiliated newspapers Miroir Sprint and Miroir du Football as examples for this thesis as opposed to L'Équipe , But et Club and France Football .
103. ↑ Lanfranchi / Wahl, p. 115f.
104. ↑ The statistical information in this chapter is based on the books by Ejnès / L'Équipe 2005 (in particular pp. 302–309), Weinrich (pp. 8–58, 82–87 and 129–135) and Leger (p. 13 , 17–60, 74–77 and 98–102), on the Coupe Latine also on the articles in the French-language Wikipedia.
105. ^ Title page of l'Équipe from June 24, 1955, in L'Équipe, sheet 4
106. ↑ Hidalgo, p. 43; Kopa 1958, p. 168
107. ↑ Leger, p. 20
108. ↑ Ejnès / L'Équipe 2005, p. 307; similar to Leger, p. 100; for Grégoire-Boutreau / Verbicaro, p. 125, his “royal achievement” resulted from the fact that he wanted to refute his critics.
109. ↑ Blickensdörfer, pp. 20–22
110. ↑ Hidalgo, p. 45
111. ↑ Kopa 2006, pp. 181/182
112. ↑ There is an advertising poster for Groupe Kopa in the photo section (there image 25) by Alfred Wahl: Les archives du football. Sport et société en France (1880-1980). Gallimard, o.O. 1989 ISBN 2-07-071603-1 , illustrated.
113. ↑ Kopa 2006, pp. 182 and 193; Otherwise, in his autobiography he hardly reveals anything about this company - the fact that he traveled around 80,000 km through France every year is the most precise statement in it.
114. ↑ In addition, Kopa and Hidalgo were the only two former professional players in this Federal Council. - Kopa 2006, pp. 183/184; Hidalgo, pp. 61f.
115. ↑ Kopa 1972, pp. 189f .; Kopa 2006, pp. 187-191
116. ↑ Kopa 2006, pp. 193–197 and 199–201
117. ↑ from an interview that Just Fontaine conducted with Kopa. - Fontaine, pp. 77-79
118. ↑ Kopa 1972, p. 21
119. ↑ Kopa 1958, pp. 19-21
120. ↑ Kopa 2006, pp. 197/198 and 207f.
121. ^ Message ( memento of November 22, 2010 in the Internet Archive ) at France Football of November 19, 2010
122. ↑ "Raymond Kopa au Panthéon des Ballons d'Or" ("Raymond Kopa in the Footballer of the Year Hall of Fame ") , France Football, March 7, 2017, pp. 72-79
123. ^ Reports in France Football of March 14, 2017, p. 10, and in Europe1 of March 28, 2017.
124. ↑ Article "Le Real a de la mémoire" in France Football of December 8, 2017, p. 8
125. ^ According to a communication from the FFF on January 19, 2011; his three predecessors were Alfredo Di Stéfano (2007), Bobby Charlton (2008) and Eusébio (2009).
126. ↑ Kopa as a Legionnaire of Honor. (No longer available online.) Formerly in the original ; Retrieved March 3, 2017 .  ( Page no longer available , search in web archives )  Info: The link was automatically marked as defective. Please check the link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.    
127. ↑ Obituary " Raymond Kopa, une légende s'éteint ( Memento of the original of March 4, 2017 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. “From March 3, 2017 on stade-de-reims.com 

This article was added to the list of excellent articles on November 16, 2007 in this version .