Alexandre Villaplane, the captain of the Blues who became a Nazi
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Book. After having known the biggest French and foreign stadiums, the last lawn that Alexandre Villaplane walked on was that of Fort Montrouge, in Arcueil (Val-de-Marne). It was there that he was taken on the morning of December 27, 1944, to be executed in the company of the man of whom he was one of the henchmen: Henri Lafont, godfather of the French Gestapo. From glory to shame, thus ends the journey of one of the stars of French football of the 1920s and 1930s.
A midfielder in the colors of FC Sète, Racing Club de Paris and OGC Nice, this tireless and combative player has worn the France team jersey twenty times. Better still, at the height of his career, he was the captain of the Blues during the first World Cup, in 1930, which was held in Uruguay. Still, after this brief South American epic where the France team was eliminated in the first round, his taste for racetracks and gambling dens took precedence over his passion for football. The public is gradually turning away from a player who has become irregular and casual, who once delighted with daring technical gestures, such as the diving heads of which some attribute to him the paternity.
From trafficking to rigged races and various scams, the name of Alexandre Villaplane slips imperceptibly from the sports section to that of miscellaneous facts. From the mid-1930s, which marked the end of his career, he never left it. From then on, the former star turns into a thug, spawns with the “middle” and is ready to do anything for money and to save his skin. Even if it means putting on the Nazi uniform and committing the worst.
“Brown Amateurism”
From this sulphurous trajectory whose story begins in Algeria, where Villaplane was born in 1905, to his fall into ignominy, the magistrate Luc Briand draws a fascinating book. Nourished by press and legal archives and testimonies – including that of one of the survivors of the extortions that Villaplane carried out in 1944 in Périgord –, The Armband brings to light a figure that is if not misunderstood, at least fallen into oblivion. And with it, a pivotal period: that of the 1920s and 1930s, which saw football take shape; both internationally and nationally. Thus, in 1932, together with the creation of a French championship, the governing bodies put an end to an endemic evil: the “maroon amateurism” used by the clubs to attract players by remunerating them, in particular through jobs. fictitious. A system by which Villaplane, sales representative, insurance agent and even croupier, will be caught.
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