V. — RIGHT HALF-BACKS
— Gabriel Hanot | 20/06/1924 —

Ask the spectators of the Olympic tournament to designate the best right half-backs of the competition: the Uruguayan negro Andrade will be quoted to you without competition. Some enthusiasts will go so far as to claim that the extraordinary ball juggler was the best footballer from the 22 nations involved. It must be recognized that Andrade, tall, thin, flexible, has an agility that disconcerts and which is more like a primitive being than beings tired by twenty centuries of civilization. Thanks to his changes of foot, his retraction of the ball, his feints of running in a direction he does not follow, Andrade excels in clearing the way to make the pass safely and usefully to the unmarked partner. The negro, who has extraordinary gifts as a dancer and as a goalkeeper (remember the half-time of the Uruguay-Switzerland match), provided a less brilliant and less effective game in the final than in previous encounters. It is that he had been previously and that he was, that day again, seriously touched in the leg and in the head.

Andrade delights the whole public. He is a very great footballer. He was not, however, the only outstanding wing half-back. The Hungarian Orth, the Czech Kolenatý, the Dutchman Lefèvre deserve to be put on the same level as Andrade. Their means are different, their ease sometimes less great, but the result is on the whole, just as satisfactory. Orth, a tall blond athlete with receding hairline, elegant, clear-sighted, is always in the way of the ball and he draws opponents to him in order to give his partners time to stand out or pick up their running speed. Kolenatý, who at the 1919 Inter-Allied Tournament and the 1922 Paris-Prague match left a sad impression of brutality and wickedness, has kept his head shaved, but he has polished his manners and is concerned with breaking up the game instead of opposing players. Like Orth, Kolenatý has an easy style, a wonderful talent for the place to occupy between the interior and the opposing winger, a remarkable sense of timely intervention. The Dutchman Lefèvre, who played both games against Sweden as centre-forward, plays with less finesse, more strength than the three halves mentioned above. He is smaller, stockier, more powerful than Kolenatý, Orth and Andrade. He knows how to use his weight and resistance to break an attack: he has also proven, by dribbling up to five opponents in a row over 60 meters deep in the field, that he has agility, breath and speed. As a centre-forward, he showed himself to be piercing, effective, first-rate shooter, goal-scorer in such conditions, one should not be surprised at his value in the place of right half-back.

Despite all the value of Orth, Kolenatý and Lefèvre, I admit that it is Andrade who holds the best place in my memory as in the memory of other spectators, profane or initiated.

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Gabriel Hanot: Best players at the 1924 Olympics