Stade Helvétique Marseille

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Stade Helvétique de Marseille ( SH for short ) was a French football club from Marseille , the capital of the Bouches-du-Rhône department .

The gymnastics club was founded in 1884 under the name La Suisse Marseille by Swiss people who had settled in the trading city on the Mediterranean for professional or private reasons. The football department was added in 1904 and the name Stade Helvétique wasn't even adopted until 1907. But although it ceased to exist as early as 1916 , the club is one of the notable ones because it is typical for understanding the early days of football in France.

The league team played at the Stade de l'Huveaune , which had space for 12,000 spectators.

France's football map around 1905

After its founding, Stade Helvétique joined the oldest football association of those years, the Union des Sociétés Françaises de Sports Athlétiques (USFSA), which had held a national championship competition called the Championnat de France since 1898 . Before the First World War until around 1910, this competition was dominated by footballers from the coal mine in France's extreme north ( Olympique Lille , RC Roubaix and US Tourcoing ), from Paris ( Standard AC , Racing Club de France and Club Français ) and from the coast of the English Channel ( Le Havre AC , FC Rouen ).

The rise from nowhere

The "Mediterranean Swiss", on the other hand, were often only able to offer seven to nine players in their first games. It was not until 1906 that they were promoted to the top division of the South Coast relay, where they met competitors who were already relatively established in Marseille itself, but also in Nîmes , Cette and Montpellier . With financial support from the Swiss community in Provence , the club then ended the 1908/09 season as a surprise winner of the league and qualified for the finals, in which it met the top favorites CA Paris in the final and defeated them 3-2. For example, an eleven in which 10 Swiss and one English player played won the first French title for a club that did not come from one of the "strongholds" mentioned above. By the way, Marseille was not the only club in which fewer French than foreigners initially played; During these years the various associations in the country gradually introduced "national quotas". At first it was enough if at least three French ran up.

In 1910, Stade Helvétique could not repeat its triumph (2: 7 defeat in the final against US Tourcoing ), but in 1911 the club turned the situation on its head again with the second title win (3: 2 against Racing Club de France Paris ). In 1912, Marseille, South Coast champions for the fourth time in a row, failed in the finals prematurely at the eventual title winner Stade Raphaëlois from the neighboring Côte d'Azur League, but in 1913 the third French USFSA championship followed with a 1-0 victory over FC Rouen .

The "crash out of peace" - and out of football

In the last pre-war season, the club was South Coast Champion for the sixth time in a row, but failed again prematurely at FC Lyon . In August 1914 Stade Helvétique - like practically all clubs in France - stopped playing due to the war and in 1916 the club dissolved completely because many Swiss people returned to their home country.

Although the club was not re-established after the war, the enthusiasm for football remained in Marseille, which today is home to one of France's top clubs, l'OM .

League affiliation and achievements

literature

  • Thierry Berthou / Collectif: Dictionnaire historique des clubs de football français. Pages de Foot, Créteil 1999 - Volume 1 (A-Mo) ISBN 2-913146-01-5 , Volume 2 (Mu-W) ISBN 2-913146-02-3