A statue of a minor-footballer was recently inaugurated on the Place Verte in Giraumont, a village of nearly 1,500 inhabitants of the Pays-Haut-Meurthe-et-Moselle. Sculpted in iron, the monument represents a headframe surmounted by a football player. It pays tribute to the Lorraine footballers who have come out of the mines and steel factories since the post-war period.
It must be said that Giraumont is not a Lorraine village like the others. If the town no longer has a football club today, in the 1950s and 1960s it gave birth to no less than sixteen professional football players in the First and Second Divisions and was a real breeding ground for the French team. . Among these, six were indeed international and three were crowned top scorers in the French Premier Division championship.
Before that, fourteen of them made the joy of AS Giraumont which won twice, in 1955 and in 1959, the title of French Amateur Group East Champion. So many men who worked in the darkness of the mine galleries and came back up to play in the spotlight. Lorraine miners who were mostly sons or grandsons of Poles or Italians who had left their country to work in industry. They were over-motivated and united. The more they played football, the less they sank to the bottom. So many character traits that did not escape the eyes of the recruiters of the professional clubs from the four corners of France who came to unearth the nuggets of the working and mining towns of Lorraine. Once they turned professional, former miners earned in a month what they earned in a year at the mine. But no matter how much they won games and won titles, deep down they were still mine guys.
Not much remains today of this astonishing part of Giraumont’s history. Two goals without a net and a rusty handrail are the last vestiges of the famous Stade de la Butte. AS Giraumont no longer exists and the mine closed its doors in 1978. A scent of nostalgia reigns over the tall grass of the village’s glorious sporting past.
Giraumont’s footballers-minors were Marcel Adamczyk (FC Metz, AS Nancy-Lorraine, Lille OSC), Henri Borowski (FC Sochaux-Montbéliard, SC Toulon, SC Bastia), Zygmunt Chlosta (SCO Angers, AS Nancy-Lorraine, Stade Rennais, AS Monaco), Germain Kicinski (SCO Angers, Châteauroux), Léon Gorczewski (FC Metz, RC Lens), Marcel Jurczak (FC Metz), Edouard Kargulewicz (Girondins de Bordeaux), Serge Masnaghetti (Valenciennes), Christian Navacchi ( Olympique Lyonnais, Dunkirk), Jean-Claude Piumi (Valenciennes, AS Monaco), David Poulet (Charleville-Mézières), Bruno Rodzik (Stade de Reims, OGC Nice), Jean-Claude Turci (RC Lens, Boulogne), Bernard Zénier ( FC Metz, AS Nancy-Lorraine, Girondins de Bordeaux, Olympique de Marseille), Hubert Zénier (Béziers, Le Havre AC, SCO Angers, SC Bastia, AS Nancy-Lorraine) and Serge Zénier (FC Metz).
Marcel Adamczyk, Edouard Kargulewicz, Serge Masnaghetti, Jean-Claude Piumi, Bruno Rodzik and Bernard Zénier have worn the jersey of the French football team.
