Robert Jonquet

Robert Jonquet

Robert Jonquet, April 1949
Personal information
Full name	Robert Jonquet
Date of birth	(1925-05-03)3 May 1925
Place of birth	Paris, France
Date of death	18 December 2008(2008-12-18) (aged 83)
Height	1.76 m (5 ft 9 in)
Playing position	Defender
Youth career
1937–1941	Robinson
1941–1942	Châtenay-Malabry
1941–1942	SS Voltaire de Paris
1942–1945	Reims
Senior career*
Years	Team	Apps	(Gls)
1945–1960	Reims	502	(9)
1960–1962	Strasbourg	55	(3)
National team
1948–1960	France	58	(0)
Teams managed
1961–1964	Strasbourg
1964–1967	Reims
	Romilly-sur-Seine
	Épernay
1978–1980	Châlons-sur-Marne
1980–1981	Reims
* Senior club appearances and goals counted for the domestic league only.

Robert Jonquet (3 May 1925 – 18 December 2008) was a French former football defender. He played the majority of his professional career for the club Stade de Reims, winning five French championships and appearing in two European Cup finals. He is considered as one of the best central defender of his time.

Nicknamed "The Hero of Highbury" after an outstanding individual performance against England in London in 1951, Jonquet was integral to the French national teams of the 1950s, playing at the World Cup finals of 1954 and 1958.

During his youth, Jonquet played in the surrounding countryside of southern Paris in Châtenay-Malabry, and afterwards for the Société Sportive Voltaire. In 1946/47, he played his first season at Stade de Reims in the division 1. He became a first-team player, and in the spring 1947, he was called up for the first time to the French national team. Jonquet was relatively short (1.76 m) for his playing position, but as a libero, played with elegance and talent in the number 5 shirt, rather than in the mould of a typical centre-back "destroyer".

In the 1948/49 season he won his first French championship, 1950 the Coupe de France, followed in 1953 by his second French championship and the Latin Cup. In the year after he participated with Les Bleus in its first World Cup finals in Switzerland; in 1955 he won the French championship again, the French Supercup, was finalist in the Latin Cup and the following year (1956) reached with Stade Reims the final of the newly born European Cup, losing to Real Madrid 3:4. Two further high points of these years took place on international fields: in October 1951 with the France he played in London against England (which included Alf Ramsey and Billy Wright). Jonquet's superb game helped France obtain a 2:2 draw, and on the next morning a newspaper headline referred to him as the "The Hero of Highbury". The "hero" also played in a European selection which defeated England in a friendly match in 1955.