William Aitken

This article is about the Scottish soccer player William Aitken. For the British politician of the same name, see William Aitken (Politician)

William John Aitken (born February 2, 1894 in Peterhead , † August 9, 1973 in Gateshead ) was a Scottish football player and coach who was active in Scotland, England, Italy, France, Belgium and Norway during his active career. He was often called Billy or Willie Aitken.

Sports career

Aitken played in his youth with Kirkintilloch Harp and Kirkintilloch Rob Roy; In 1917 he moved to Glasgow , where he stormed first for Queen's Park and then for the Rangers  - mostly on the right attacking side. After the end of the First World War he was brought in by the English Central League club Port Vale , which was accepted into the professional Football League in the same year (1919) . At the club from Stoke he was part of the team that won the Staffordshire Senior Cup in 1920 , but was sold to Newcastle United in the same year . During his time with the Magpies , the tricky and fast striker was called to at least one representative game of the Anglo-Scottish against the Scottish league selection (1921). Between 1924 and 1929 further stations followed Preston North End , Chorley FC, from 1926 Norwich City and Bideford Town. In English league football he played a total of 204 games in which he scored 25 goals.

In the summer of 1929 he accepted an offer from Juventus Turin and then continued his career on the continent, but from 1930 in France . Since there were officially only amateur footballers there at that time, his first club, AS Cannes , employed him as a player-coach . In this double function, William Aitken led the team from the Côte d'Azur in April 1932 to the cup final , in which his team beat Racing Roubaix 1-0 . In the subsequent first season of the professional league , Cannes was also runner-up behind Olympique Lille . From 1934 to 1936 he worked at Stade Reims ; with this club he succeeded in 1935 winning the French amateur championship. This was also associated with the promotion of the team from Champagne to the professional second division , in which Aitken occasionally stood up even when he was over forty - albeit, as the Reims club writer and then teammate Lucien Perpère reports, often in the position of right-back . In the 1935/36 season he played ten point games, in which he also scored three goals.

From 1937 until the outbreak of war in 1939 , William Aitken still coached FC Antibes , which at the end of Aitken's work had to be relegated from the top division. For the southern French, he tied his soccer boots for the last time in a league match in November 1938 - just under three months before his 45th birthday. He later returned to the UK , where he worked for Vickers-Armstrongs , an armaments company. After the end of the war, he trained teams in Belgium and Norway for two years each ( Brann Bergen , until 1950). William Aitken then worked until his retirement as a representative of a wine and liquor retailer in Tyne and Wear . He died there at the age of 79.

Palmarès

• Staffordshire Senior Cup Winner: 1920
• French Football Cup Winner: 1932
• French runner-up: 1933
• French amateur champion: 1935

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Jeff Kent: Port Vale Personalities - A Biographical Dictionary of Players, Officials and Supporters. Witan Books, 1996, ISBN 0-9529-1520-0 , p. 4; Mike Davage: Glorious Canaries - Past and Present 1902-1994. Norwich City FC, Norfolk 1994, ISBN 0-9523-8570-8 , p. 12
2. ↑ see the article "EURO 2008 connections: Italy" ( Memento of the original from July 24, 2011 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was automatically inserted and not yet checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. on the club side of the Bristol Rovers 
3. ^ Pascal Grégoire-Boutreau / Tony Verbicaro: Stade de Reims - une histoire sans fin. Cahiers intempestifs, Saint-Étienne 2001 ISBN 2-911698-21-5 , p. 23ff. and 246
4. ↑ Lucien Perpère / Victor Sinet / Louis Tanguy: Reims de nos amours. 1931/1981 - 50 ans de Stade de Reims. Alphabet Cube, Reims 1981, p. 36; There is also a photo of Aitken as a player at the friendship meeting between Stade Reims and FC Sochaux in the summer of 1935.
5. ↑ Almanach du football éd. 1935/36. Paris 1936, pp. 74f.
6. ^ Paul Joannou: The Black 'n' White Alphabet - A Complete Who's Who of Newcastle United FC Polar Print, Leicester 1996, ISBN 1-8995-3803-8 , p. 11