LOSC salutes one of its “legends”. Yvon Douis, club attacker between 1953 and 1959, died of Covid-19 earlier this week.
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The Covid-19 took away one of the legends of LOSC. Yvon Douis, died earlier this week, he was 85 years old.
This Norman by birth is considered one of the best players in the history of the club, he was the last living representative of the champion team of France in 1954.
Recently, Yvon Douis lived alone in an nursing home in the south of France. “In these kinds of places, 80% are women. So, I’m not going to tell them that I played against Pelé …”, he slipped during his last interview in Nice-Matin.
In the mid-1950s, the forward was a star. With the France team, he challenged King Pelé, the best player in football history, without ever losing what makes the most beautiful champions shine: modesty.
The last 1954 LOSC champion is dead.
Yvon #Douis scored 73 goals in 187 official appearances with LOSC between 1953 and 1959. Of his 20 caps, 8 were obtained while playing for Lille. pic.twitter.com/j41d8gRtPj
— DBC_LOSC (@DBC_LOSC) January 29, 2021
In the Pantheon of French football
Yvon Douis is the key player in the heyday of LOSC. 1954, a flamboyant northern team crushes the competition and becomes champion of France. The following year, Lille won the Coupe de France, the last major title before a long decline.
At the time, the magic team was notably carried by Yvon Douis, a very talented striker who would also shine in the France team. He will wear the blue jersey twenty times and will climb with Raymond Kopa, Just Fontaine and the other “Blues of Sweden” to third place in the 1958 World Cup.
It was another time
For Yvon Douis, it all started at the age of 15, when Lille spotted the young phenomenon in Evreux. His father will not let him go towards his football career only on the condition of obtaining his baccalaureate. The young Yvon will win in the Lille workforce at the inter station, which has now disappeared.
It was in this position, between the winger and the center-forward that Douis shone. The inter, a key element of tactical systems until the 1950s, is similar to what is today called the “milieu box-to-box”, doomed to evolve between the lines, neither quite midfielder, nor quite attacker, in a register which is close to that of the German player Thomas Müller.
All this is now part of the history of sport, but the oldest remember that the inter played in a system “WM”, which became obsolete after the legendary Hungarian 4-2-4 victory, led by Puskas, against England (5-3) in 1953.
“A striking personality, a charming boy”
Patrick Robert, president of LOSC association, questioned by the club website, remembers Yvon Douis as “one of the best French players in the history of LOSC, technically but also statistically”.
Yvon Douis will leave the image in the North “of an outstanding personality, of a charming boy, who arrived in Lille at a young age, from Rouen and who had become a great French footballer.”
After his visit to Lille between 1953 and 1959, Yvon Douis will wear the colors of Le Havre and Monaco. In total, he scored 140 goals in almost 400 Premier League games. A tribute will be paid to him on the lawns of Ligue 1.
