" LE RED STAR, mémoire d'un club légendaire"
(Extracts, Part Eight)
AUGUSTIN CHANTREL
Red Star 1928, Coupe de France winners featuring Chantrel
Front : Chantrel, Brouzes, P. Nicolas, Martin, Lebreton
Back : Baron, Farmer (coach), Wartel, Domergue, Espanet, Diaz, Lund
"Red Star can go to England, Austria, Egypt; they can play Swansea, Admira Vienna, Arsenal Cairo; they can welcome to the Stade de Paris Slavia Prague, FC Bâle, Irun, that's no longer enough. Red Star must rediscover what they once were in the Coupe or else see their european standing dwindle away. Delblat understood this. What remained of the great Red Star ? Memories, and two men, Nicolas and Cordon. Therefore it became neccesary to reconstruct a new Red Star around them.
The sporting director set about his task. He consulted the best man to help, the President Jules Rimet. He himself had a son, a brilliant footballer. Jean Rimet mentioned to his father a remarkable youth team at his club, the Paris Universitaire Club. The PUC recruited the majority of its scholars from the Left Bank, around Louis-le-Grand, Henri IV, Sainte-Barbe and had a tradition of sending the best youngsters to England to face a team of the best players in the county of Kent. One can imagine what that meant to fifteen year-olds to represent the PUC abroad, to become effectively international players.
One of the youngsters had a famous name. Jean de Moro-Giafferi was the son of Vincent de Moro-Giafferi, the lawyer of Landru. This grand orator had been horrified to hear that his son had been playing football.... in the rain. He believed that the match stopped as soon as the rain started. Despite this naïvity didn't stop Moro from becoming the state under-secretary for education and sports.
In time the youngsers became the eleven juniors at PUC and, effectively the first team at the club. A noisy bunch, because along with it's headquarters, an old run-down hotel in the Bûcherie and it's stadium at Porté Dorée, the club had retained a tradition very "Left Bank", somewhat bohemian.
The Pucistes were less renowned on the pitch than they were for their antics in trains on the way to games; sort of an early version of hooligans, without the violence but with bawdy songs and a certain lavatory humour. The bras d'honneur (rude gesture) had not yet been imported from North Africa, but they were noted for frequent "moonies" at train windows.
Red Star had an eye on several players; Ibos, de Britto a.k.a. Chocolat, Janin, Chantrel and Tintin Turpaud, son of the Châtellerault deputy, Lafarge and Fourcade.
Out of all of them, Augustin Chantrel was the best. Handsome, dark with a fashionable haircut with an Argentinian look which appealed to the young ladies at the Années folles, dances and at the Bœuf sur le Toit.
He excelled at all sports. Later he played in a rugby match at the Stade Jean Bouin, withthe first XV of the CASG as a full-back, a position not normally given to debutants. He even once won the 1km race at Bry-sur-Marne".
(to be continued)
LE RED STAR,
mémoire d'un club légendaire
by Guillaume Hanoteau, with Gilles Cutulic
© Robert Laffont - Editions Seghers
Dépôt légal : 1983