The five Caesars of football
Jean Eskenazi | 28/01/1937

Hugo Meisl

He sacrifices above all to intelligence. Apart from it, no hello!

Intelligence and diplomacy, that's all Huao Meisl!

And, one helping the other, he always manages to draw the quintessence for Austrian football which is his life...

Ah! if it hadn't been for that damn ball of leather, what fate would have been his.

He speaks ten languages, he knows everything. But for him football comes first!



Vittorio Pozzo

Florence is his favorite city. And, when the Italian team plays, he is on the edge of the sidelines, his chin in his hands, with the air of a meditator that Dante must have taken on when he was promising himself in Hell. Dante? A bit of Machiavelli too...

He is a football thinker, a picky philosopher...

He is also a great psychologist and who experiences the matches of the Squadra Azzura as the most emotional of the Eifossis.



Dr. Otto Nerz

He's the football doctor. The man who shuts himself up, like Faust, in a laboratory to find new formulas:

SB2 + CO4 FG = Goal in the fourteenth minute.

And one, two, one, two!

— Pupil Jakob, recite me by heart the clearence at the foot.

Obviously he often succeeds and this iron discipline is envied by some.

But the imponderables?



Karel Lotsy

He is a peaceful Dutchman like all his compatriots.

He loves his little country with that love which only the descendants of William of Orange have.

Maybe that's why he devoted himself body and soul to the Holland team.

From January 1st to December 31st he thinks only of her.

And his benevolent authority, his harans to his troops make the Holland team one of the first on the Continent.



Gaston Barreau

He is charmingly simple. He is like the gentleman who is afraid of having his chair creak.

Psychology, philosophy... all that he wants to ignore.

He is a possible sinner like the one described by François Coppée.

He will never be a dictator of French football.

But he is entitled all the same to a freely consented sympathy and his efforts are warmly followed.