Robert Wurtz

This article deals with the referee, for the neurobiologist see Robert H. Wurtz

Robert Wurtz, 1976

Robert Wurtz [wyrtz] (born December 16, 1941 in Strasbourg ) is a former French football referee who was also active on the international stage in the 1970s and 1980s. After his sporting career, he worked as a television presenter .

Robert Wurtz was voted “Referee of the Year” in France five times (1971, 1974, 1975, 1977 and 1978).

Athletic career

The Alsatian never played football at a higher level himself, but was in the same team as Gérard Hausser and Gilbert Gress at Racing Strasbourg as a boy and a teenager . In the 1961/62 season he was a regular as a defender at the southern Baden association league club Kehler FV in the third-highest division at the time; For training and home games, he rode his bike to the other side of the Rhine . Due to the stress of studying biology and chemistry at the same time in Strasbourg, Robert Wurtz changed his profession after a year and began refereeing at the end of 1962. From the mid-1960s, Pierre Schwinté , referee at two world championship finals ( 1962 and 1966 ), promoted him intensively in this activity; so Wurtz was used from 1967 in the highest amateur league , from autumn 1968 in the professional second and from June 1969 in the first division (debut in the game RC Paris-Sedan against Olympique Marseille ).

In 1973 and 1976 he headed the French Cup final , and in 1973 he incurred the derision of both teams for recognizing two goals, each of which was preceded by an obvious handball by goal scorers Bernard Lacombe ( Olympique Lyon ) and Didier Couécou ( FC Nantes ). Couécou was quoted after the game as saying: "Today the referee was Ray Charles ". However, this episode did not affect Robert Wurtz's career, although because of this, in his own words, "complete dropout", he then seriously considered giving up the referee altogether. As early as 1970 he was first used as a UEFA referee and from the middle of the decade as a FIFA referee. His first international appearances were a friendly match between the national teams of Belgium and Luxembourg (November 7, 1969) and - after he had "proven" with the UEFA crest on his chest - a Toto Cup encounter on German soil when of 1. FC Kaiserslautern on 31 July 1970 in Homburg against Tatran Prešov 4: 0 won. He made his debut as a linesman in the autumn of 1969 at a European Cup match between Austria Wien and Dynamo Kiev .

His achievements, rated overall as good, helped Wurtz to work as a professional referee early on: in the summer of 1971 he made eleven game directors in the Mexican league , and in the spring of 1974 the Brazilian federation signed him for three preparatory games for the Seleção for the World Cup in Germany ( against Greece , Paraguay and Romania ). In Mexico he received a fixed salary of US $ 500 plus expenses of US $ 250 per batch for almost three months.

He headed numerous European Cup matches, including the final in the 1975/76 cup winners' competition between RSC Anderlecht and West Ham United and the final in the 1976/77 national championship , which Liverpool won 3-1 against Borussia Mönchengladbach . Furthermore, he was in the 1976 World Cup second leg , in which Bayern Munich reached a 0-0 win at Cruzeiro Belo Horizonte , on the sidelines. These and his appearances at the 1978 World Cup - the preliminary round meeting Brazil against Austria , in the second round Argentina against Peru and as a line judge in the Netherlands against Iran  - made him known far beyond France's borders. At the European Championships in 1980 he was the game director of the match between Germany and the Netherlands . 1979 he whistled the final of the South Pacific Games ( Tahiti versus Fiji ) in Suva ; in May 1984 he was entrusted with the management of the final second leg of the U-21 European Championship between England and Spain. For the 1982 World Cup and the 1984 European Championship, however, the French Football Association did not nominate Wurtz, but Michel Vautrot , and at the 1986 World Cup , Joël Quiniou was preferred to the now 44-year-old. His last international competitive game he directed on October 1, 1986 ( Partizan Belgrade against Borussia Mönchengladbach, 2-4), his last national ( FC Montceau against CL Dijon , second division) on March 15, 1990. However, he often appeared afterwards in charity - and anniversary games and - as in his playing days - it wasn't too bad to whistle games of lower-class amateur teams in Northern Alsace.

Robert Wurtz was famous for his theatrical gestures and his almost dance-like running style, which earned him the nickname “ Nijinsky the whistle” for the first time in 1974 by the Brazilian newspaper O Globo and which had been reprimanded early on by some official observers (“I wonder if I've seen a referee or a boxer. ”). He also spoke a lot with players during the encounters, and occasionally even cheered them on. Legendary is a scene from a league game in November 1989 in the Prinzenparkstadion , which threatened to get out of hand on the part of the players, to which the coaches from Paris Saint-Germain and AJ Auxerre , who were constantly calling into the game, contributed. When the game was interrupted, Wurtz ran to Auxerre's coach Guy Roux on the sidelines, sank to his knees shortly before he reached him, raised his hands folded in prayer to Roux and asked him to finally stop this bad habit. Roux acknowledged this with a sweeping gesture (“ scratching foot ”), the audience and several players applauded and the game then suddenly calmed down.

Referee statistics

• in France between 1968 and 1990 a total of 450 first division , 100 second division and 50 cup matches (including two finals)
• 80 appearances internationally between 1969 and 1986, including at the 1978 World Cup and the 1980 European Championship as well as a World Cup final and two European Cup finals
• five times "Referee of the Year" in France (1971, 1974, 1975, 1977 and 1978)

Life alongside and after a sporting career

Robert Wurtz, who received his doctorate and then worked for a long time in a blood testing laboratory in Strasbourg, has been married since 1980 and has lived in Climbach in northern Alsace ever since . In the 1980s he acted for several years as an advisor to the Prefect of Bas-Rhin and in 1990 took on a managerial position in a chemical company in Lauterbourg . During this time he also published his memoirs in book form. From 1998 he returned to the public as a referee - at Interville , the French version of Spiel-ohne-Grenzen - successor Germany Champions , which appeared on various channels of France Télévisions (first with TF1 , from 2004 on France 2 and from 2006 on France 3 ) was broadcast, as well as on Interville Junior on the TV channel Gulli . Due to a stroke in July 2007, he had to quit this job; He then commented on the attack with the words "I was shown the dark yellow card".

literature

• Robert Wurtz: Au cœur du football. 25 ans d'arbitrage. Robert Laffont, Paris 1990, ISBN 2-221-06907-2

Web links

• Article about Robert Wurtz on Foot Citoyen ( Memento from September 27, 2007 in the Internet Archive ) (French)
• Le Fan club de Robert Wurtz (French, dead. Archived version ( Memento from July 11, 2007 in the Internet Archive ) on the "WayBack Machine" from Internet Archive )
• Data and photos on worldreferee.com

Remarks

1. ↑ see Wurtz, p. 35ff., And the team picture in the photo section (behind p. 126), 2nd page
2. ↑ Wurtz, pp. 45 and 51f.
3. ↑ Wurtz, pp. 79-94
4. ↑ L'Équipe / Gérard Ejnès: Coupe de France. La folle épopée. L'Équipe, Issy-les-Moulineaux 2007 ISBN 978-2-915-53562-4 , p. 389; similar to Hubert Beaudet: La Coupe de France. Ses vainqueurs, ses surprises. Alan Sutton, Saint-Cyr-sur-Loire 2003 ISBN 2-84253-958-3 , p. 113
5. ↑ Wurtz, pp. 86 and 145
6. ↑ Wurtz, pp. 111 and 233
7. ↑ Wurtz, p. 106f.
8. ↑ ^{a b} to http://robertwurtz.site.voila.fr/
9. ↑ Wurtz, p. 116ff.
10. ↑ UEFA finals according to //de.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Wikipedia:Defekte_Weblinks&dwl= http://www.uefa.com/search/index.htmx?q=Robert+Wurtz Page no longer available ] , Search in web archives: [ http://timetravel.mementoweb.org/list/2010/http://www.uefa.com/search/index.htmx?q=Robert+Wurtz uefa.com
11. ↑ World Cup appearances according to Hardy Grüne: Football World Cup Encyclopedia 1930-2006. AGON, Kassel 2004 ² ISBN 3-89784-261-0 , pp. 276-283 and 624
12. ↑ Wurtz, p. 232f. and 251
13. ↑ Wurtz, p. 234f.
14. ↑ Wurtz, p. 157
15. ↑ in French "le Nijinski du sifflet à roulette"
16. ↑ Wurtz, p. 90
17. ↑ Robert Wurtz ou l'art de la communication ( Memento of 27 September 2007 at the Internet Archive ); Wurtz, p. 224, with a picture of this scene in the photo section (behind p. 126), fourth from last page.
18. ↑ Wurtz, p. 244f.
19. ↑ "J'ai reçu un sacré carton jaune. Et même un peu teinté de rouge! “- http://www.jeanmarcmorandini.com/news.php?id=7054  ( 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.