Pierre Cazal (1948 – 7 October 2024) was a French literature professor and football historian who was widely regarded as one of the greatest contemporary connoisseurs of the history of the
French national team.
Throughout his career, he wrote four books about the history of the Bleus, the first of whom, published in 1992, covering the team's first 497 matches, and he later became the editor of the ''Chroniques bleues'' website, where he published weekly articles about the Bleus in the early 2020s, including the series ''Les premiers Bleus'', a project about the Pre-
WWI
World War I or the First World War (28 July 1914 – 11 November 1918), also known as the Great War, was a global conflict between two coalitions: the Allies (or Entente) and the Central Powers. Fighting took place mainly in Europe and th ...
French internationals, in which he uncovered many previously unknown facts, corrected numerous long-time misconceptions, and debunked several mistakes that had persisted through time.
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Early life and education
Pierre Cazal was born in 1948. He was a graduate of the French Academy of Letters.
Career
The 1992 and 1998 dictionaries
A retired literature professor, Cazal channeled his encyclopedic memory and insatiable curiosity into the history of the French national team.[ Therefore, in the early 1990s, Cazal, together with Jean-Michel Cazal and Michel Oreggia, were tasked by the ]French Football Federation
The French Football Federation ( FFF and 3F; or Triple F; , ) is the governing body of football in France. It was formed in 1919 and is based in the capital, Paris. The FFF is a founding member of FIFA and is responsible for overseeing all aspec ...
(FFF) with "cleaning" the errors of their publications, especially its 1986–87 directory, a list of international players that had 11 false ones, while omitting 6 real ones, not to mention all the first name errors, some of which being "downright fanciful, as if someone had invented them". Unlike other countries, who possessed very comprehensive works of their national teams, France was lagging far behind statistically; for instance, a simple consultation of the official English reports of the 1908 Olympic Games
The 1908 Summer Olympics (officially the Games of the IV Olympiad and also known as London 1908) were an international multi-sport event held in London, England, from 27 April to 31 October 1908. The 1908 Games were originally schedu ...
was enough to correct all the errors of France's line-ups.[
In the end, this work resulted in the publication of a book in 1992, ''l’Intégrale de l’équipe de France de football'' ("The Complete Collection of the French Football Team"), which not only covered the first 497 matches of the Blues, but also included the dictionary of its players, both in terms of first names and dates of birth or death.][ In 1998, just before the ]World Cup
A world cup is a global sporting competition in which the participant entities – usually international teams or individuals representing their countries – compete for the title of world champion. The event most associated with the name is ...
, Cazal published an extended and more complete version of this book, which had "a rich narrative that recounted the matches as if they had taken place yesterday", thus being considered by some as arguably the most in-depth work on the history of the French national team.[ Notably, he highlighted that seven of the goals scored by France between 1907 and 1913, came via the "goalkeeper charge", the action of jostling the ]goalkeeper
In many team sports that involve scoring goal (sport), goals, the goalkeeper (sometimes termed goaltender, netminder, GK, goalie, or keeper) is a designated player charged with directly preventing the opposing team from scoring by blocking or i ...
to prevent him from having the ball, which was tolerated by the rules of the time, with striker Eugène Maës making it one of his specialties.
At the time, the Internet
The Internet (or internet) is the Global network, global system of interconnected computer networks that uses the Internet protocol suite (TCP/IP) to communicate between networks and devices. It is a internetworking, network of networks ...
as we know it today did not yet exist, so this research had to be carried out by consulting newspaper archives in libraries, making dozens of phone calls, and writing to correspondents abroad.[ This long and laborious process inevitably led to some mistakes, such as wrong first names, which were kept because the policy of the time stated that "if the error was not proven, the previous indications would be retained".][ In the early 1990s, all former international players from the pre-WWI period were deceased, along with most of their descendants, so it was not until the digitization of civil and military records, old sports newspapers, and the appearance of Gallica and genealogy sites, that allowed Cazal to carry out more thorough investigation, thus proving these first name errors and finally find out their real names, such as ]André Sellier
André Louis Sellier (26 October 1890 – 10 March 1920) was a French footballer who played as a forward for Étoile des Deux Lacs and the French national team between 1906 and 1910.
Club career
Born in the 16th arrondissement of Paris on 26 Oc ...
, Simon Sollier, Raymond Jouve, and Gaston Brébion, who had been erroneously named Henri, André, Albert, and Gilbert, respectively. Another such example is that of François Barat
François Marie Barat (10 February 1889 – unknown) was a French footballer who played as a midfielder
In the sport of association football, a midfielder takes an Glossary of association football terms#O, outfield position primarily in the ...
, erroneously named Jean-Marie Barat, which he was only able to find thanks to a clue from an old testimony that was given to him by the ex-president of the ''AS Bon Conseil''.
Cazal eventually acknowledged his good faith mistakes in the 1992 and 1998 dictionaries during his series ''Les premiers Bleus'' ("the first Bleus"), a project that consisted of biographical articles about the forgotten Pre-WWI
World War I or the First World War (28 July 1914 – 11 November 1918), also known as the Great War, was a global conflict between two coalitions: the Allies (or Entente) and the Central Powers. Fighting took place mainly in Europe and th ...
French internationals, which were written by him and then published in the ''Chroniques bleues'' website from January 2023 until his death in October 2024.[ On one occasion, he stated that this series "gave me the opportunity, in addition to making my ]mea culpa
''Mea culpa'' () is a phrase of Latin origin that means ''my fault'' or ''my mistake'', and is an acknowledgment of having done wrong. The expression is also used as an admission of having made a mistake that should have been avoided and, in a ...
, to establish the definitive, most reliable civil status possible for as many former international players as possible".[ In an 2019 interview, he also stated that "I personally know much more about all the international players before 1940 than what can be found on ]Wikipedia
Wikipedia is a free content, free Online content, online encyclopedia that is written and maintained by a community of volunteers, known as Wikipedians, through open collaboration and the wiki software MediaWiki. Founded by Jimmy Wales and La ...
or other much poorer sites".[
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Chroniques bleues
His 1998 dictionary served as the basis for the creation of the ''Chroniques bleues'' website in August 2010 by Bruno Colombari, with whom Cazal exchanged over 4,000 email messages between February 2019 and his death in October 2024.[ During those five years, Cazal wrote a total of 140 articles for ''Chroniques bleues'', including the aforementioned series ''Les premiers Bleus'', the last of which being about André Poullain (1913).][ He published these biographies with a maximum rate of one article per week, so in order to reach 1980, he would have to write a total of 640 bios, the equivalent of 13 years.][
His work, together with that of Matthieu Delahais, Raphaël Perry, and Richard Coudrais, played a crucial role in giving ''Chroniques bleues'' a historical depth far beyond Colombari's initial project of 2010.][ For instance, in September 2020, he published an article about the youngest player in France's history, in which he proved that the holder of this record was not Jules Verbrugge, who had been widely believed to be such for years, but instead is Félix Vial.][
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Writing career
In the early 2020s, Cazal wrote three books about the French national team, ''Sélectionneurs des Bleus'' in 2020, ''L’épopée des Bleus à l’Euro'' ("The Epic of the Blues at the Euro") in 2021, and ''Une histoire tactique des Bleus'' ("A Tactical History of the Blues"), published in September 2022. He also worked with the Franco-Uruguayan historian Pierre Arrighi on two books about Jules Rimet
Jules Rimet (; 14 October 1873 – 16 October 1956) was a French football administrator who was the 3rd President of FIFA, serving from 1921 to 1954. He is FIFA's longest-serving president, in office for 33 years. He also served as the pres ...
and the 1924 Olympic Games in Paris
Paris () is the Capital city, capital and List of communes in France with over 20,000 inhabitants, largest city of France. With an estimated population of 2,048,472 residents in January 2025 in an area of more than , Paris is the List of ci ...
, both published in Spanish.[
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Death
Cazal died in the Moselle
The Moselle ( , ; ; ) is a river that rises in the Vosges mountains and flows through north-eastern France and Luxembourg to western Germany. It is a bank (geography), left bank tributary of the Rhine, which it joins at Koblenz. A sm ...
commune of Château-Salins
Château-Salins (; , from 1941 to 1944 ''Salzburgen'') is a Communes of France, commune in the Moselle (department), Moselle Departments of France, department in Grand Est in north-eastern France. Until 2015, Château-Salins was a Subprefectures ...
, on 7 October 2024, at the age of 75.[ Following his death, Colombari highlighted his kindness and self-sacrifice, as well as his "less visible work of advice, corrections, clarifications which irrigates a large part of the editorial content of the site and the database which feeds it".][
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References
{{DEFAULTSORT:Cazal, Pierre
1948 births
2024 deaths
French academics
French writers
French historians