Lucien Laurent: the player who scored the first goal in World Cup history and won a war

The FIFA Soccer World Cup It has almost 100 years of history, during which different historical moments have been experienced, from the Maracanazo in 1950 to Zinedine Zidane’s header against Marco Materazzi in 2006. Many of these chapters were saved in the pages of this glorious competition and, As time goes by, there will be new anecdotes to tell.

However, there is not a case but a player who has been almost forgotten, and it is about Lucian Laurent who will forever bear the banner of being the footballer who scored the first goal in the World Cups and, moreover, the one who won a war. Learn a little more about him in the following lines.

Laurent was born on December 10, 1907 in Saint-Maur-des-Fossés, France, at a time when football was almost amateur and did not move big brands as it happens today. The Frenchman was not only engaged in football, but also worked for Peugeot, the famous car company.

It was July 13, 1930, in Uruguay the first edition of the Soccer World Cup and France and Mexico opened the curtain on this acclaimed competition. In that Gallic team was a young Lucien Laurent (23 years old), who opened the scoring after 19 minutes and, without realizing it, put his name in the history of the beautiful game for scoring the first goal of this tournament.

As there was no recorded material of what was that World Cup edition, the former soccer player himself had to tell how his great feat was. “The game started normal. Both teams fought for the ball. Suddenly, Delfour attacked down the right and passed Liberati, who crossed. I ran down the middle and connected with the ball as it fell, and it went into the corner of the goal. We were all very happy”, he said in statements collected by the newspaper El País.

Years after the first World Cup, Laurent was part of the French Army, which participated in the Second World War and in 1942 he was caught by the Germans and released three years later.

After this difficult episode, he continued his football career and retired in 1946 at the age of 39 to later disappear from the radar. It was not until 1989 (at the age of 82) that he was found again and it was learned that he was living happily in Besançon. He even continued to play soccer weekly with a group of friends.

Finally, he continued to live like a celebrity until he passed away in 2005 at the age of 97.

Source-larepublica.pe