Roger Piantoni

Nancy

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…

After leaving Nice he became coach of the club of Carpentras from 1967 to 1971. He was later a member of the Federal Council of the French Football Federation (FFF) from 29 August 1970 to 31 December 1988. He remained attached to the Lorraine and the club of Nancy. He also worked for several years as a commentator on football matches on Antenne 2 alongside Michel Drucker and Bernard Père. A tribune at the Stade Marcel Picot, where AS Nancy-Lorraine is, bears his name.

Piantoni received his first selection on 16 November 1952, in a friendly match in Dublin between the French team and Ireland (1–1). Piantoni tied the score for French at the 67th minute mark. In 1954, he did not participate in the World Cup in Switzerland. Injured a few months earlier during a France-Italy, he was unable to recover in time. Selected for the 1958 World Cup, he was one of the French players who brought the team to the semifinals, losing 5–2 to Pele's Brazil team. Teaming with Just Fontaine and Raymond Kopa, Piantoni played the first five games where he scored four goals, including the second in the semi-final against the Seleção. Due to emergency surgery for appendicitis, he did not play during the game against Germany, whom they beat 6–3 to secure third place. He played his last match with Les Bleus on 28 September 1961, a qualifying match for the 1962 World Cup in Chile against Finland (5–1). In the 79th minute of play on a free kick, he scored the last goal of his international career. From 1952 to 1961, Piantoni played 37 matches under the blue jersey, scoring 18 goals.

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 Platini later experienced the same disappointment.