White Rovers Paris
The White Rovers were a football club founded by British nationals in Paris in 1891 . He is one of the oldest clubs that practiced the association variant of this ball game there; his 10-1 victory on March 1, 1892 against the International Athletic Club is the oldest recorded football game in France .
history
Jack Wood, who had recently come to France for professional reasons and had already played football in England, is known by name from the founders , as well as his brother Tom and two Scots named McBain and McQueen. The club was open to interested parties of all nationalities, but its members were mainly British and American.
The Rovers (or "Routiers" in French) initially had no French opponents to fear; In addition to the above-mentioned runaway victory , they also managed a 5: 1 against Standard AC in 1892 and a 3: 2 over Club Français in January 1893 , which even the German magazine Spiel und Sport reported in detail. At Easter 1893 they invited Marylebone FC from London to Paris and were defeated by them with 1: 3, while a Paris selection with 0: 3 and the Standard AC even lost 7: 7 against the English amateur club. In January 1894, the White Rovers were accepted by the oldest French football association, the Union des Sociétés Françaises de Sports Athlétiques (USFSA), and in the same year they took part in its first national championship , which in these "childhood years of football" was still in Paris and limited its surroundings. After an 11-0 win against CA Neuilly and a surprisingly meager 1-0 win against Club Français , the end of April 1894 saw the meeting against Standard AC in the final. For the first time, the Rovers failed to beat a domestic opponent (2-2 after extra time), and so the two clubs agreed to play a replay on May 5th. Both teams had ten Englishmen and one French on the pitch - and this time the game for the Coupe Gordon Bennett , named after the founder of the cup, the publisher of the New York Herald , even ended with a 2-0 defeat for the Routiers .
Their list has been handed down: Thomas; Cotton, Cox; Pullar, Exell, Gamay; Wilson, Pares, J. Wood, Young, F. Roques.
In 1895 the White Rovers qualified again for the final after defeating Paris Star (8: 1) and Club Français (2: 1 after extra time) and lost it, again against Standard AC, with 1: 3.
From 1896 the championship was in a simple round robin held, which was still limited to the Paris region; The Rovers won seven of their eight encounters, with a goal difference of 35: 2 - only against Club Français it was a defeat, with 1: 4 also quite clear, so that for the third time in a row only the runner-up for the club jumped out. A year later, the Routiers were tied with Standard AC at the top of the table, and since the goal difference did not count at the time, there was a play-off between the two teams. The White Rovers had won the league game against their opponents, but when it came to the championship, they were beaten 2: 3 and were left empty-handed for the fourth time in a row.
In 1898 - numerous players had returned to Great Britain or the USA in the meantime - the club landed with 0:30 goals and 0:20 points behind in the last place in the highest Paris league; Mindful of his tradition and successes, he still did not have to relegate, but he did not bring a team together in 1899 and disbanded that same year. On December 12, 1898, the team lost 7-0 to a German selection in Paris - this encounter was the first of the so-called original German international matches .
Venue
The White Rovers operated their sport on an area that belonged to the railway company Chemins de fer de l'Ouest and was near the Bécon-les-Bruyères train station in the western Paris suburb of Courbevoie .
literature
- Thierry Berthou / Collectif: Dictionnaire historique des clubs de football français. Pages de Foot, Créteil 1999 - Volume 2 (Mu-W), ISBN 2-913146-02-3
- Alfred Wahl : Les archives du football. Sport et société en France (1880-1980). Gallimard, o. O. 1989, ISBN 2-07-071603-1
Supporting documents and comments
- ↑ Article “Paris Letter” of January 14, 1893, p. 11f. (as a scan on the website of the University and State Library of Münster)
