Roger Piantoni

Roger Piantoni (26 December 1931 – 26 May 2018) was a French footballer who played as an inside-forward and was a star on the France national team in the late 1950s. During the 1949–1950 season, he was the champion of Lorraine with his team, and was the top scorer in the league with 35 goals. At the 1958 FIFA World Cup, Piantoni was considered one of the best French players of his time. He was nicknamed Bout d'chou, meaning "Cabbage Tip", ranking as the sixth top scorer in the French Championship with a total of 203 goals in Division 1.

Roger Piantoni spent his youth in the mining town of La Mourière, in the community of Piennes in Meurthe-et-Moselle. There he was known for playing with Thadée Cisowski in the local club, US Piennes. In 1948, with the youth team of Lorraine, he won the National Youth Cup by beating a youth team from the South-East in the championship. Henri Biancheri and Francis Méano were also on the South-Eastern team. He also played later against Raymond Kopaszewski who was on a northern youth team. The following year, he was accepted onto the French Junior team for the European championship. However, he performed poorly due to insufficient cardio. Fellow France national team player Michel Plantini later experienced the same disappointment.

Piantoni began his career at the age of 19 with FC Nancy during 1950–1951 season. In the first match of the championships, against RC Lens on 27 August 1950, he scored two goals. In his first season, he managed to become the top scorer of the championship with 27 goals. He scored five goals on the 28th day against Le Havre (6–1) and two quadruples (four goals) during the return match against RC Lens (4–2) and RC Strasbourg on the final day (5–1). In November 1952, in a friendly match against Ireland, he was selected to join the France national team for the first time.

Over the course of seven seasons with FC Nancy, he scored a total of 92 goals. He and his teammates achieve some top performances in the Coupe de France. They reached the semi-finals of the season of 1950–1951, and the finals in 1953 (which was played on 31 May in Colombes.) FC Nancy, led by Jacques Favre, lost 2–1 against Lille. A few months later, on 23 September 1953, FC Nancy beat Real Madrid 4–2 on their Chamartin field (later renamed Santiago Bernabéu) in a friendly match. This match was remarkable as the official debuts of Piantoni for FC Nancy, and Alfredo Di Stéfano for Madrid.

However, FC Nancy faced major financial problems. During the 1956–1957 season, they were demoted to the second division and the club was forced to let its best players go. Piantoni was transferred for 250,000 francs (25 million former francs before 1960, which is about $256,000 US) to Stade de Reims which had just sold Raymond Kopa to Real Madrid. ...

Source: Article "Roger Piantoni" de Wikipédia en français, soumis à la licence CC-BY-SA 3.0.