Roger Marche

Roger Marche in 1949

Roger Marche (born March 5, 1924 in Villers-Semeuse Département Ardennes , † November 1, 1997 in Charleville-Mohon , Département Ardennes) was a French football player .

The club career

His first footballing stations were ASC Mohon and OFC Charleville , both based near his birthplace on the border with Belgium . In 1944 he moved to Stade de Reims together with Pierre Flamion from neighboring Mohon ; there he soon received the nickname "Le sanglier des Ardennes", which was by no means maliciously meant: some fans of the CS Sedan, who also play in this wooded region, still refer to the players on their team as "Ardennes wild boars" . In addition to his origins, Roger Marche was given this name by two personal characteristics: on the one hand, the left defender was a merciless fighter, even if he was not a pure destroyer of the opposing game. On the other hand, he stayed in the village of Mohon throughout his professional career ( incorporated in Charleville-Mézières in 1966 ), and he only went to the respective games in Reims and later to Paris (80 and 220 km away), so he did hardly ever trained with his respective team. To do this, he ran six to seven kilometers a day through the surrounding forests; he himself once said that between games he practically never saw a ball. Today this would be unthinkable, but his former coaches in the club and national team accepted it, especially since Marche performed on the pitch at all times.

At Stade Reims he first played under the German crew that was still in existence until the end of 1944 in the northern group of the top division, then from the 1945/46 season in the single-track division 1 - and always in the top group (places 4, 4, 2 and 3 ). Marche fell due to his style of play early on the selection committee of the association FFF and received a first appointment to the national team in March 1947. 1948/49 he was then also the first French champion . 1950–1952 it "only" reached places 3 or 4, but in 1950 Marche won the national cup with Reims and in 1953 his second championship title followed. That year, the "man with the high forehead" also won the Coupe Latine .

After ten years with the Rémois , he joined the Racing Club Paris in 1954 , with whom he always played in the top third of Division 1 , was second and third twice, but never won a championship title. Racing also came away empty-handed in the cup, only reaching the quarter-finals in 1959 and 1961. After Marche was only considered in two games in the D1 in the 1961/62 season (the previous year in 36 matches), he, at the age of thirty-eight, hung his football boots on the proverbial nail.

Stations in his career

• ASC Mohon
• Olympique FC Charleville
• Stade Reims (1944-1954)
• Racing Club Paris (1954–1962)

The national player

Between March 1947 and December 1959 Roger Marche played a total of 63 times (38 games for Reims, 25 for Paris) in the Équipe Tricolore . With his forty-seventh international match (December 1955) he outbid the number of appearances of Étienne Mattler and was the record international of his country until Marius Trésor overtook him in 1983; Marche was also captain of the team in 41 games from 1950. He was also used in an unofficial international match, the Watersnoodwedstrijd against Dutch professional footballers on March 12, 1953. In his very last game, he also scored his only international goal; To conclude from this, however, that this (winning) goal was a farewell gift from the Spaniards to a great footballer, misses the truth: it was a sharp, actually unsuccessful shot with his weak right foot, which got enormous spin and behind struck the stunned Barça goalkeeper Antoni Ramallets .

At the age of 34, he took part in the 1958 World Cup under his former teammate in Reims, the national coach and sélectionneur (head of the player selection committee) Albert Batteux , but only played there (in the preliminary round match against Yugoslavia ).

Life after football

It is not surprising that even after the end of his remarkable career, Marche remained true to his place of residence with both feet on the ground: he ran the bar ( bar-tabac ) in Mohon, which he had given to his in-laws, as the landlord and ran a small one next to it Transport company. At the end of 1997 he died where he always lived.

Palmarès

• French champion : 1949, 1953
• French cup winner : 1950
• Coupe Charles Drago winner : 1954
• Coupe Latine winner : 1953
• 63 senior internationals, one goal
• French record international 1955–1983
• 542 appearances and 3 goals in D1 (301/1 for Reims, 241/2 for Paris), so players with the eighth most appearances (as of April 2008)

literature

• Marc Barreaud: Roger Marche. Un sanglier, un champion, un myth. Euromedia, Douzy 2011, ISBN 979-10-90217-04-1
• Jean Cornu: Les grandes equipes françaises de football. Famot, Genève 1978
• Pascal Grégoire-Boutreau / Tony Verbicaro: Stade de Reims - une histoire sans fin. Cahiers intempestifs, Saint-Étienne 2001 ISBN 2-911698-21-5
• Michel Hubert / Jacques Pernet: Stade de Reims. Sa legend. Atelier Graphique, Reims 1992 ISBN 2-9506272-2-6
• L'Équipe (ed.): Stade de Reims. Un club à la Une. L'Équipe, Issy-les-Moulineaux 2006 ISBN 2-915535-41-8
• Lucien Perpère / Victor Sinet / Louis Tanguy: Reims de nos amours. 1931/1981 - 50 ans de Stade de Reims. Alphabet Cube, Reims 1981
• Jacques and Thomas Poncelet: Supporters du Stade de Reims 1935-2005. Self-published, Reims 2005 ISBN 2-9525704-0-X

Web links

• Page with game photo of Roger Marche