I. — THE BEST SIDE
— Gabriel Hanot | 13/06/1924 —

We know who was the best team in the Olympic football tournament. If Uruguay felt the wind of defeat in their match against Holland, they recovered afterwards and this semi-final was for them, in short, a bad day with no tomorrow, an exceptional failure. The South Americans amply deserved their victory, by the excellence of their physical condition, the sureness of their technique, their speed of execution, finally by the variety of their tactics, which took place with the help of impersonal passes when the field was more or less cleared in front of them, and in the form of dribbling, when the opponent was massed in front of their goal and hampered the freedom of developments.

Uruguay achieved undisputed success. Perhaps, however, we have not seen all aspects of his talent. It successively eliminated nations which entrusted their chances of success to momentum, to physical and moral energy. Uruguay's matches against France, Holland and Switzerland fascinated the spectators but it would not have been without interest either to see the Olympic champion battling scientific teams like Sweden first, Hungary, Czechoslovakia. Given equal technical qualities, the enthusiasm and efficiency of the South Americans would almost certainly have won the decision; the fight would have in any case deserved to be seen. Likewise, a meeting between Uruguay and the mysterious Egypt which, in four years, has made astonishing progress, would have been rich in lessons. The Egyptians, let us not forget, owe it to the weakness of their goalkeeper and the bad luck of their forwards in front of the opposing nets to have been, despite their agility and skill, heavily beaten by the Swedes, the day after their success over the Hungarians. As for the unfortunate and haughty Spaniards, would they not have forced the inhabitants of their former possessions to bring to light a new facet of their game?

The best team won. But we have seen other good teams in action. We also saw, grouped or isolated here and there, many first-rate footballers, whom we will review successively, according to the place they occupied in their team. Our only ambition will be, by highlighting the characteristics of the “ace” game, to contribute, to the extent of our strength, to the improvement of French football.