René Petit

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René Petit (far right) with his teammates from Real Unión Irún (1924)

René Petit (born October 8, 1899 in Dax , † October 14, 1989 in Hondarribia ; full name: René Petit de Ory ) was a French football player who spent almost his entire sports career and professional life in Spain , where he continued into the The present is considered to be “ Di Stéfano of the 20s”. Petit was also a national player and Olympic participant for France. Professionally he worked as an engineer .

Player career

Club stations from ... to
real Madrid before 1914-1917
Real Unión Irún 1917-1920
Stade Bordeaux Université Club 1920
Real Unión Irún 1920 – early 1930s

René Petit was the son of a French executive of the northern Spanish railway company Compañía de los Caminos de Hierro del Norte de España and a Spanish woman in the French Basque Country . The family moved to Madrid soon after the turn of the century , where René played first in a youth football team and then - from 1914, when he was just fifteen - in the men's team of Real Madrid (which initially operated under the name Madrid FC ). With the Madrilenians, the player , who played in the connector or half-forward position, won the Central Spanish Championship in 1916 and 1917 - there was no national league in Spain until 1928 - and in 1917 also the Spanish Cup competition . He won this title again in 1918, but then with Real Unión Irún , a club that was based near the Spanish-French border. In the same year Petit was drafted into the French army; In contrast to his brother Jean, who was also considered a talented footballer, René Petit survived the last weeks of the First World War unscathed.

René Petit (right) before the kick-off game between Irun and his ex-club Real Madrid (1924)

In 1920 the French football association FFFA appointed him to the group of players who formed the national team at the Olympic football tournament in Antwerp . René Petit became France's first national player who did not come from one of the country's early football strongholds (Paris, northern France, Normandy, Mediterranean coast). Since it was then necessary to belong to a club in the country for which you wanted to take part in the Olympic Games, he temporarily joined the Stade Bordeaux Université Club , with which he also reached the second round of the French Cup in 1920 . In Antwerp he played both French games against Italy (3-1 win) and Czechoslovakia . In the semi-final against the Czechoslovaks, lost 4-1, René Petit was one of the best players in his eleven, according to a contemporary report. He then returned to Irun and played there again very successfully for the Real Unión Club, with which he won two further titles in the national cup competition in 1924 and 1927 and was champion of the eastern Basque province of Gipuzkoa several times up until the early 1930s (see Petits Palmarès further down). Another player with a French-Basque family background was Manuel Anatol in Irun's 1924 Cup Winners' Cup , and then a striker, Santiago Urtizberea, began to establish himself in Real Unión's first team, who - like Petit at the time - was only 15 years old at the time was.

When the FFFA wanted to bring Petit back to France's national team, the Spanish federation took a stand - and René Petit decided to continue his career in Spain. Petit is currently considered to be one of the first due to his extraordinary physical constitution, his ball technical skills and his understanding of the game, which was unusual for the time - in particular the combination game he practiced with precise passes instead of the still common wide, uncontrolled hits in the direction of the strikers - as one of the first " modern player ”in Spanish football, as the“ greatest player Irun ever had ”, the first“ star player ”of Real Madrid and, according to El Mundo, as Di Stéfano's legitimate predecessor .

Life outside the football stadiums

René Petit, who had always remained an amateur during his sporting career, worked privately as a hydraulic engineer , mostly in the Basque Country, was involved in a responsible position in the construction of the Yesa dam and the construction of its dam and was head of the public works office from 1959 to 1969 in the province of Gipuzkoa. For his services he was awarded the Orden del Mérito Civil . He spent the rest of his life until his death, a few days after turning 90, in Hondarribia, just a stone's throw from the French border town of Hendaye .

Palmarès

  • Spanish cup winners: 1917 , 1918 , 1924 , 1927
  • Central Spanish Master: 1916, 1917
  • Master of the Province of Gipuzkoa / Guipúzcoa: 1920, 1921, 1922, 1924, 1926, 1928, 1930, 1931
  • Olympic participant: 1920
  • 2 international matches for France

literature

  • Pierre Cazal: France (1900-1920). in: International Federation of Football History and Statistics (ed.), Football World Magazine No. 23, 1994
  • 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: La belle histoire. L'équipe de France de football. L'Équipe, Issy-les-Moulineaux 2004, ISBN 2-9519605-3-0

Web links

Notes and evidence

  1. ↑ see for example "Rene Petit, ingeniero del football" from February 2010 at Cartas Esféricas
  2. ↑ a b see Petit's portrait ( Memento of the original dated May 30, 2013 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. under the heading "Club legends" on realmadrid.com @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.realmadrid.com
  3. ↑ Cazal, p. 4; L'Équipe / Ejnès, p. 382; Chaumier, p. 240
  4. ↑ L'Équipe / Ejnès, p. 295
  5. ^ Report from L'Auto of September 1, 1920, facsimile in L'Équipe / Ejnès, p. 28
  6. ↑ Chaumier, p. 240
  7. ↑ a b after the El Mundo article of October 30, 2008
  8. ↑ Cazal, p. 4
  9. ↑ see the detailed interview with Petit (PDF; 415 kB) in the newspaper Navarra hoy on November 6, 1983
personal data
SURNAME Petit, René
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Petit de Ory, René (full name); Petit de Ory, Renato (Spanish name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION French soccer player
DATE OF BIRTH October 8, 1899
PLACE OF BIRTH Dax , France
DATE OF DEATH October 14, 1989
Place of death Hondarribia , Spain