Santiago Urtizberea

Santiago Urtizberea
"Santi" Urtizberea 1962
Personnel
Surname	Santiago Urtizberea Onativia Alberdi Garmendia
birthday	July 25, 1909
place of birth	Irun ,  Spain
date of death	January 18, 1985
Men's
Years	station	Games (goals) 1
1924-1932	Real Unión Irún
1932-1934	Donostia FC
1934-1936	Real Unión Irún
1937-1948	Girondins Bordeaux
1 Only league games are given.

Santiago Urtizberea Onativia Alberdi Garmendia (* July 25, 1909 in Irun ; † January 18, 1985 ), also called Santi Urtizberea for short, was a Basque - Spanish football player who completed the later part of his career in the French league .

Player career

Santiago Urtizberea began his football career in the mid-1920s with Real Unión , the big club in his hometown. As a teenager, the brawny center forward played in Real Unión's first team, which was successful at the time, two years of which (1924–1926) together with two other Basque “border crossers” between Spain and France, namely René Petit and Manuel Anatol . There Urtizberea developed into a striker in the truest sense of the word: "physically sturdy and robust, at the same time explosive, of enormous fighting power and goal danger, at the same time as a person charming, straightforward and modest". His style of play earned him two nicknames on both sides of the Bidasoa - in Spain they called him “el Tanque ”, in France “le gentleman taureau ”. He stayed with Irun until 1932.

With Real Unión Urtizberea won the Spanish National Cup in 1927 , although he did not play alongside Luis Regueiro in the final . In Spain, however, a national first division only existed from the 1928/29 season . After their introduction, Santiago Urtizberea became the second best attacker in the league in 1929/30 with 18 goals. He also won the regional championship of Gipuzkoa with Irún in 1926, 1928, 1930 and 1931 . In 1932 Irun relegated to the second division , and the attacker moved to the neighboring Donostia-San Sebastián for the first-class FC Donostia . For this club he got 23 goals in 24 competitive games in the following two years and in 1933 he won his fifth regional title from Gipuzkoa. Nevertheless, two years later he returned to his home club in Irun, which continued to only play in the second division. In his six seasons in the Spanish Primera División, "Santi" has scored a total of 70 goals in his 71 games, 48 ​​(in 52 games) for Irún and 22 (in 19 appearances) for Donostia.

In July 1936 the Spanish Civil War broke out. When the fascist troops , the Republican Irun began to bomb, Urtizberea fled like many other residents of the city via the nearby border into French Hendaye . His daughter Miren later wrote:

“My father and his friends were apolitical. The only reason they had fled to Hendaye was to avoid perishing in the hail of bombs - including, as far as I remember, Bixente Lizarazu's grandfather  - and initially thought they would be able to return home soon. But as the war dragged on, they realized their uncertain situation, with no work or income. Fortunately, Benito Diaz [a former coach of Donostia FC and the Spanish Olympic team] had found a job as a coach in Bordeaux , and he brought my father, his teammate Jaime Mancisidor and a few others to the banks of the Garonne [late 1936] . "

One of his first major games with the Girondins Bordeaux was the final of the French amateur championship in May 1937, and the double goalscorer in the 2-1 victory over FC Scionzier was Santiago Urtizberea. The Girondins were then accepted into the professional second division , and the civil war refugee now earned some money with the sport. From 1939 - with the outbreak of the Second World War and the occupation of large parts of France by the German military in 1940 - there was only one first professional league , divided into groups , into which Bordeaux was accepted. Until the end of these "war championships" ( 1939 to 1945 ), which currently only count as unofficial seasons, Urtizbereas' eleven always finished in the top third of the table and even came second in the southern group in 1944/45; he himself was the third top scorer of the season with 18 goals behind his teammates Roger Planté and Désiré Koranyi ( FC Sète ).

This time was more successful for the Girondins in the national cup . In its 1940/41 season , they first won the competition in the occupied zone of France, with Santiago Urtizberea having scored three goals in the quarter-finals against the US Saint-Servan , beating the winner of the unoccupied zone in the following interzone final and the final national final Winner of the partial competition of the north-east French "forbidden zone", the SC Fives , with 2-0. Both goals for Bordeaux were shot by "Urtizberea the bull, a demolition master for every defense". The first goal he scored with a massive header, where he not only rammed the leather, but also two opposing defenders and their goalkeeper "into the net". Two years later , the striker was again in the national final, which ended 2-2 after extra time against Olympique Marseille and in which the Basque remained as goalless as in the repeat match, which he lost 4-0.

After the war ended, the striker was a member of the Girondins' league team until 1948, which was relegated to the second division in 1947. Santiago Urtizberea, who, in addition to his only three clubs, was also appointed to the provincial selection of Gipuzkoa, the Spanish Olympic team (1928) and the selection of the French Ligue du Sud-Ouest , ended his career at the age of almost 39.

Life after player time

Then Urtizberea, who had married his girlfriend Maritxu in Bordeaux and had become a father in 1941, stayed for a modest salary as a coach in the youth and amateur field with the Girondins; there he trained the future professional Didier Couécou , among others . In 1953, the second team he was in charge of won the title of French amateur champion. In 1957 he briefly looked after the professional team after their long-time coach André Gérard had resigned. In 1966 the Girondins organized an anniversary game, the proceeds of which "Santi" received. In the 1970s he moved back to the Franco-Spanish border and lived in Saint-Jean-de-Luz until his death .

Palmarès

• Spanish Cup Winner: 1927 (not used in the final)
• Masters of the Province of Gipuzkoa: 1926, 1928, 1930, 1931, 1933
• French Cup Winner: 1941 (and finalist 1943)
• French amateur champion: 1937 as a player, 1953 as a coach

literature

• L'Équipe / Gérard Ejnès: Coupe de France. La folle épopée. L'Équipe, Issy-les-Moulineaux 2007, ISBN 978-2-915-53562-4
• François Trasbot: Girondins de Bordeaux. Alan Sutton, Saint-Cyr-sur-Loire 2011 ^2nd , ISBN 978-2-84253-657-2

Web links

• Urtizbereas datasheet on the Real Sociedad website

Notes and evidence

1. ↑ according to Trasbot, p. 41, born on July 26th
2. ↑ ^{a b} Trasbot, p. 41f.
3. ↑ see the data sheet at Real Sociedad (below under web links )
4. ↑ see Urtizberea's data sheet in the Basa de dades històrica del futbol español
5. ↑ quote from Trasbot, S. 43f.
6. ^ Sophie Guillet / François Laforge: Le guide français et international du football éd. 2009. Vecchi, Paris 2008, ISBN 978-2-7328-9295-5 , p. 144
7. ↑ L'Équipe / Gérard Ejnès, p. 26
8. ↑ L'Équipe / Gérard Ejnès, p. 357
9. ↑ Article “Trente ans après” from the club newspaper Le Girondin from 1966, facsimile in Trasbot, p. 48.
10. ↑ L'Équipe / Gérard Ejnès, p. 359
11. ↑ Trasbot, p 45
12. ↑ Trasbot, p. 50
13. ↑ see the short biography at girondins4ever.com
14. ↑ Trasbot, p. 49
15. ↑ The information in Trasbot, p. 49, that Urtizberea died in Bordeaux, contradicts other sources that indicate Saint-Jean-de-Luz or Irun as the place of death.