André SIMONYI

André Simonyi was born in the former Austro-Hungarian Empire. He lived an exemplary healthy lifestyle, and had an unusually long playing career, which is particularly rare in modern-day football. This peerless striker went on to play until his 48th birthday. Everything started for him at the Hungarian club Attila of Budapest in the 1930s, where he would quickly demonstrate his elegance and his efficiency on the pitch. In 1933, he arrived in France, having caught the eye of the freshly-crowned Champions, Olympique Lillois. In his two seasons in the North of France, he netted no fewer than 37 times, on each occasion finishing in the Top 10 goalscorers in the First Division. In 1935, he signed for FC Sochaux for a season, before moving on to Red Star in Paris, where he would become a true legend of the club. With his team-mate, Alfred Aston, they would spearhead the Paris side's attack for almost ten years. There, he would go on to win the Northern Zone Championship title in 1941, and the French Cup in 1942. Simonyi was an outstanding technicien, who was known for his precision and deadly shooting ability. He is still, to this day, Red Star's record goalscorer in the First Division with a total of 79 goals. In 1946, he was transferred to Stade Rennais University Club for the princely sum of 1 Million French Francs, but he would only spend a couple of months in Brittany, scoring 13 goals in 22 appearances during his brief spell at the club. Rennes were struggling financially, and were forced to sell him on to SCO Angers in January 1947 for 1.7 Million Francs. He thus finished the 1946/1947 season in Angers, where he would also have a brief interlude as Player/Manager. Thereafter, he went on to play for Stade Français, and then Rouen, before exiling himself in Portugal, where he played in the colours of SC Covilha in the First Division. In 1952, he returned to France to help out his former club, Red Star, as Player/Manager between July and October of 1952. With a lack of success on the pitch for his team, however, he was released from his post, and forced to look elsewhere. CO Roubaix took him on, and then he returned to SC Covilha the following season. After hanging up his boots, he dropped into amateur football to coach French clubs, such as Avallon and Cherbourg, where he would lace up his boots occasionally to help out, at the ripe old age of 48. This was a man who hated being inactive, and always played to win, and he eventually became a banker in Baccara in a club on the Champs-Elysée between 1963 and 1980, before turning his hand to breeding racehorses. Simonyi remains the 48th-ranked striker in the history of the First Division, with 119 goals in 185 matches, and he was naturalised as a French national, which enabled him to even get selected for the French national team between 1942 and 1945, earning four caps in the process.