Roger Boli

Roger Boli (born September 26, 1965 in Abidjan , Ivory Coast ) is a former Ivorian football player who has completed most of his career in French gaming .

Player career

Roger Boli came to France as a teenager to continue his education there; He first played football at an amateur club where he lived in Romainville , from where coach Guy Roux brought him to the AJ Auxerre youth center in 1982 together with his younger brother Basile . Roger Boli, a relatively short left-footed striker at 1.68 m , was used for the first time in Auxerre's first division eleven in 1984 and won the French youth cup competition with the youth team in 1985 . When the AJA surprisingly defeated AC Milan 3-1 in the 1985/86 UEFA Cup , he was part of the Burgundy starting lineup, but he was only part of the league team from 1986 - and then he had a strong competitor in Pascal Vahirua the left attacking side, which the coach often preferred. In 1988, Boli agreed to a loan to Auxerres league rivals OSC Lille , and twelve months later he moved from there to the neighboring second division Racing Lens .

At this club, too, he initially had considerable adjustment problems, albeit not so very athletically, because he quickly developed into a fan favorite at the Stade Félix-Bollaert , but in everyday life in the mining town of Lens . At the end of his second season with Racing, the team was promoted to Division 1 , in which the northern French always finished in an upper midfield in the table for the following five years. For Roger Boli, the 1993/94 season was a particularly successful one. The winger, who usually had hardly ever scored more than five goals, literally "exploded" in terms of performance this year and won  the top scorer's crown with his 20 goals this season - together with Youri Djorkaeff and Nicolas Ouédec . A year later, he scored nine goals again, which meant he wasn't even among the top 20 goalscorers. When Racing Lens advanced in the 1995/96 UEFA Cup to the round of 16, he was in four of the games in the team and scored two goals. After seven years in Lens, he moved to Le Havre AC in 1996 , where an injury put him out of action for several weeks. After his recovery, the relegation-threatened Normans had to play at Racing Lens, where Roger Boli scored the only goal of the game, and then many fans of the loser even applauded their former darling. Although Le Havre was able to keep the class at the end, the attacker left France in 1997, where he had made a total of 270 games with 54 goals in the first division and 64 games and 27 goals in the second division.

In England he found a new club with third division club Walsall after a trial at Swindon Town . There Boli scored twelve league goals over the course of the season and was just as successful in cup games as the team advanced relatively far in all three cup competitions (four-round defeats in the FA Cup at Manchester United and in the League Cup at West Ham United and the semi-finals of the Football League Trophy ). He was selected by the league players for his performance this season in the PFA Team of the Year of the Second Division . In particular, his ability to make quick turns with the ball and thus to score goals seemingly "out of nowhere" caused increased interest in the 31-year-old. Boli, like his compatriot "Jeff" Péron , had already submitted a transfer request at Christmas time and expressed the wish to play in a higher class; a move to Dundee United in the Scottish Premier League came about during the break of the season in the summer of 1998. His trip to Scotland only lasted a few months, despite a transfer fee of £ 150,000. After coach Tommy McLean's early dismissal , Boli no longer played a role in his successor Paul Sturrock's plans and after five competitive appearances - three of them in the league - and a single goal in the Scottish League Cup , he moved back to England in October 1998 Third division to AFC Bournemouth . At Bournemouth he received after an injury-ridden season and six goalless league appearances beyond the end of the season, and then ended his career in 1999.

Internationally, Boli was only taken into account in the French U-21 national team , but has not played for either the French or the Ivorian senior team . Only when he played his farewell game (La fête à Roger) in 2001 - a selection of former racing footballers met the French " 1998 World Champions " in Lens - Roger Boli played for one half in the blue national dress.

Club stations

• until 1982 in Romainville (as a teenager)
• 1982–1988 AJ Auxerre (from 1984/85 in the league team)
• 1988/89 Lille OSC
• 1989–1996 Racing Lens (1989–1991 in D2)
• 1996/97 Le Havre AC
• 1997/98 FC Walsall (in D3)
• July to October 1998 Dundee United
• 1998/99 AFC Bournemouth (in D3)

Palmarès

• Top scorer in French Division 1 : 1993/94
• Admission to the "Team of the Year" of the English Second Division : 1997/98

Life after the active time

Roger Boli has settled in northern France and owns a FIFA- recognized agency in Lille for the support and placement of football players . His clients include Jérôme Rothen , Gaël Kakuta , Pascal Chimbonda , Aly Cissokho and his nephew Yannick Boli .

Web links

• Bolis datasheet at footballdatabase.eu
• Biography at afterfoot.fr

Notes and evidence

1. ↑ ^{a b c d based} on Boli's biography at afterfoot.fr (see under web links )
2. ↑ L'Équipe / Gérard Ejnès: 50 ans de Coupes d'Europe. L'Équipe, Issy-les-Moulineaux 2005, ISBN 2-9519605-9-X , pp. 215 and 219
3. ^ 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. 253
4. ^ Sophie Guillet / François Laforge: Le guide français et international du football éd. 2009. Vecchi, Paris 2008, ISBN 978-2-7328-9295-5 , pp. 188-213
5. ↑ L'Équipe / Gérard Ejnès: 50 ans de Coupes d'Europe. L'Équipe, Issy-les-Moulineaux 2005, ISBN 2-9519605-9-X , p. 242
6. ↑ First division numbers in France according to 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., second division numbers according to his data sheet at footballdatabase.eu (see under web links ).
7. ↑ Barry J. Hugman (Ed.): The 1998-99 Official PFA Footballers' Factfile . Queen Anne Press, Harpenden 1998, ISBN 1-85291-588-9 , pp. 39 .
8. ^ Matt Lawton: Batistuta key to end Yorke fear. Birmingham Post , July 16, 1998, accessed May 26, 2012 . 
9. ^ It's Roger and out of United. (No longer available online.) Daily Record , October 16, 1998, archived from the original on January 13, 2016 ; Retrieved May 26, 2012 . 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.  
10. ↑ Barry J. Hugman (Ed.): The 1999-2000 Official PFA Footballers' Factfile . Queen Anne Press, Harpenden 1999, ISBN 1-85291-607-9 , pp. 38 .
11. ↑ GERS SEEK A ROTHEN DEAL. (No longer available online.) Sunday Mail , January 17, 2010, archived from the original on April 9, 2016 ; Retrieved May 26, 2012 . 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.  
12. ↑ Matt Lawton: Big clubs treat kids like piece of meat, says Ken. Daily Mail , September 5, 2009, accessed May 26, 2012 . 
13. ↑ Chimbonda no to Toon move. (No longer available online.) Liverpool Echo , March 24, 2008, archived from the original on February 19, 2016 ; Retrieved May 26, 2012 . 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.  
14. ↑ see the article at lequipe.fr from June 18, 2009