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People at your club who were actual prisoners

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    #26
    Slightly different from most of the incidents on this thread, Alloa's veteran striker (and all round God amongst men) Willie Irvine was taken hostage during a prison riot (or minor disturbance, but that doesn't sound quite as impressive). On his first game after being released he scored our winning goal against Forfar, a high point in a season where he could generally do no wrong.

    http://www.heraldscotland.com/news/1..._the_deadlock/

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      #27
      Surely Bert Trautman is the most famous example of this?


      (Not to mention Pele, Bobby Moore, John Wark, Ossie Ardiles, and Russell Osman)

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        #28
        Originally posted by Crystal Staples View Post
        Our first summer signing of 2014 Russell Benjamin was arrested a few weeks later and is currently two years into a nine-year sentence as the ringleader of a criminal gang exporting heroin and cocaine. We also had Courtney Meppen-Walter last season, who served 9 months in 2013 for causing death by dangerous driving.
        We also had Russel Benjamin. Terry Fearns, who holds our record for most goals in a season, was sentenced to seven years after £30,000 of cocaine was found on his kitchen table.

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          #29
          Originally posted by Gerontophile View Post
          It's really difficult to search for my team's players, aside from I don't think there are many. I keep reading about nutters from Boston.
          Including Arsenal??? No love for Peter Storey then? Counterfeiting, running a brothel...

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            #30
            ... then there's David Hillier and Graham Rix...

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              #31
              Mine, a classy baddie (OK, not my club, PSG, but very close - another Parisian club, a proper one), blows all your small fry out of the water.

              But I'll wait for ursus, or any other connoisseur of fine Parisian clubs, to step up to the plate.

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                #32
                Well, PSG had Godwin Okpara . . .

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                  #33
                  Originally posted by ursus arctos View Post
                  Well, PSG had Godwin Okpara . . .
                  Okpara was just a scumbag, not a classy baddie.

                  Mine was a proper gangster (famous in France but unknown in the UK, not in his "criminal capacity" anyhow – I’ve never seen anything on him in the English football media). He was often to be found in the loucher parts of Paris, Marseille or Toulouse after (prematurely) hanging up his boots, as he was an avid friend of alcohol, gambling, brothels, of the fashionable celebrities of the time as well as the demi-monde and occasionally of the downright irredeemables (the Guérini Brothers). His many dalliances with the underworld would prove his undoing.

                  I certainly don’t want to glamourise what he did (which I obviously find horrendous, esp. for the poor staff left traumatised by the violence of his actions) but, regrettably, the sort of crimes he was involved in used to carry a lot of cachet and kudos in the criminal fraternity and beyond, and still do to some degree.

                  His old club (in a different incarnation) gained huge notoriety in France in the 1980s when a very wealthy owner took over and suddenly offered outlandish wages to all and sundry (I remember average defenders – not internationals – asking for 75 grand a month to play there! Some of their star players were on £100,000 a month – with bonuses – at one point, which were ridiculous amounts at the time, especially in a bog standard club. I don’t think any other club in Europe paid that sort of money then, apart maybe from AC Milan under Berlusconi in the late 1980s, or Marseille at a pinch; speaking of which, Bernard Tapie looks in a very bad way – stomach and oesophageal cancers – and listening between the lines to what he said a few days ago on the French TV, he might not be around for very long).

                  Ex French international, considered by the older generation to be one of the best in his position in French football.

                  Right, on your bike ursus, you know more than enough now…
                  Last edited by Pérou Flaquettes; 22-11-2017, 20:50.

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                    #34
                    The club is obviously Racing (I knew from the start that it could never be Red Star), but I genuinely don’t know this story.

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                      #35
                      You may not know this story (very few people do outside of France TBH, I thought you may as you know Parisian clubs very well, I understand it's pretty old stuff though!) but I’m pretty sure you've heard of him as a footballer.

                      2 clues.

                      He once dazzled the Scots so much at Hampden Park in front of 125,000 spectators (late 1940s, with France) that the Scottish press gave him a flattering nickname on the back of that game (a nickname that stuck, and he was then known by this nickname in France - nickname was translated into French).

                      He died last year.

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                        #36
                        Ah, the original Français volant, and not a member of the Paris-based ice hockey team that bears that name.

                        It so happens that I was reading about the millieu Marseillais earlier this week, but his name didn’t come up.

                        Do you know the truth as to whether Francis le Belge really could have played for OM?

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                          #37
                          Yep, "the flying Frenchman", René Vignal, famous also for his casquette which he often wore in games.



                          Great series of photos in this Libé article:

                          http://www.liberation.fr/sports/2016...-gaule_1530667


                          http://www.lemonde.fr/football/artic...0_1616938.html

                          Dans les années 1960, il participe à une série de braquages. Bien qu’armé lors de ces hold-up, René Vignal répétera par la suite n’avoir jamais fait usage de violence. Le 7 octobre 1971, il est condamné à quinze ans de réclusion criminelle à l’issue d’un procès où des grands noms du football – Albert Batteux, Raymond Kopa, Just Fontaine – viennent témoigner en sa faveur. Il est finalement libéré en 1978, après dix années de détention.
                          Strongly suspected of having taken part in 27 bank robberies/attacks of Brink's-type armoured vehicles in the 1960s, but the police could only pin 6 or 7 on him. Was sentenced to 15 years, but only served 10.

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                            #38
                            Originally posted by ursus arctos View Post
                            Ah, the original Français volant, and not a member of the Paris-based ice hockey team that bears that name.

                            It so happens that I was reading about the millieu Marseillais earlier this week, but his name didn’t come up.

                            Do you know the truth as to whether Francis le Belge really could have played for OM?
                            Nope, I didn't even know he was a promising footballer (although you know what the Marseillais are renowned for in France I take it, the gift of the gab and their propensity to hugely exaggerate everything - check out on the Net the story of the sardine that blocked the Vieux Port... -, so maybe he was never that good).

                            https://www.mafieux.fr/4-mafieux-fra...ment-celebres/

                            Francis le Belge fait ses premiers pas dans le quartier de la Belle de Mai et rêve d’une carrière de footballeur. À l’âge de 16, Francis se blesse et dit adieu à l’Olympique de Marseille. À la place, c’est une carrière de brigand qui lui tend les bras.

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                              #39
                              That Libé piece is stunning

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                                #40
                                It is, indeed, I love this photo:



                                1958. He hadn't played at all for 4 years -injuries- but managed to land himself a contract with AS Béziers, then in Division 2, after a long legal battle with the Racing who wouldn't release him. You can see on his face how fired up and hungry for revenge and success he was (missed the 1954 world cup because of injury). Sadly, it wasn't to be as he fell out with the coach and jacked it in after a season, at 32.

                                Some great photos and interesting text here too:

                                https://www.rene-vignal.fr/ren%C3%A9-vignal/

                                https://www.rene-vignal.fr/ren%C3%A9...ans-les-pieds/

                                https://www.rene-vignal.fr/ren%C3%A9...nte-verticale/

                                "The Flying Frenchman" certainly was incredibly spectacular for the time (a real showman), crazy and fearless: 19 fractures and countless other injuries. Was once rendered blind for 3 weeks after a collision with a Bordeaux striker. Pics of his many serious injuries:

                                https://www.rene-vignal.fr/ren%C3%A9...les-blessures/

                                (although of course, the laws of the game – or rules of the game as they were called – did sod all to protect goalkeepers).

                                Had a huge leap too (from the text: "René Vignal – 1m76 – possédait une telle puissance dans les cuisses que, sur une détente verticale, il pouvait passer la tête au-dessus de la barre transversale" [he could jump and put his head over the crossbar]. En hauteur, pour s’être entraîné juste une fois avec des athlètes du Racing, il sauta 1m85….juste une fois, pour voir !!!")

                                If you read Italian, this is good too:

                                http://www.ultimouomo.com/the-artist-vignal/

                                Incidentally, I didn’t know he had served in the SAC ("Ha fatto anche parte del SAC, servizio di polizia gollista, perché gli piaceva De Gaule e non gli piacevano i comunisti. Faceva da guardia del corpo, attaccava locandine"), an organisation created by Charles de Gaulle officially as a kind of "think tank" to promote Gaullist ideas but very soon used as a private police and intelligence service, doubling as De Gaulle’s Praetorian guard (troubled times: lots of subversive lefties/communists to track and thwart - and worse -, Algerian war etc.). Makes sense I suppose, they needed hardened career criminals to carry out their dirty work and he was one, although there is no evidence he did anything hugely illegal in the SAC.

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                                  #41
                                  Would be a great subject for a film

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                                    #42
                                    a lot of hard looking people in polo necks smoking gitanes.

                                    Alisher Usmanov did 6 years of porridge in the soviet union. I don't know if he is still involved in arsenal, but he certainly seems to be involved at everton.

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                                      #43
                                      Originally posted by ursus arctos View Post
                                      Would be a great subject for a film
                                      My team in Oslo, Valerenga had a young striker on their books in the mid-80s by the name of Pal Enger. He even played for us in the UEFA cup in 1986 against Beveren in one of the early rounds. I came across one of the match programmes from the 1987 season where it was mentioned that aside from being a footballer, he was also running hos own business (unspecifed what kind of business).

                                      In February of 1988 he broke into the Edvard Munch museum and stole the painting 'Vampire'. The same year he also robbed a jeweller in Oslo and stole goods for about 4.8 million kroner (£450 000, give or take). He relationship with Valerenga was terminated by then. Out of prison, he was at it again in 1994, breaking in to the National Gallery stealing yet another Much painting, 'The Scream' this time.

                                      He later took up painting himself, and even had an exhibition in 2011. Sadly, none of his pictures were stolen. However, he was not finished in the art theft business and was involved in yet another burglary in 2015 in an art gallery in Oslo, this time of contemporary Norwegian painters Hariton Pushwagner, Vebjorn Sand and Bjarne Melgaard. Apparently he left his wallet at the crime scene, providing the investigators with a useful clue.

                                      The last I heard of him was that there are plans to make a Hollywood Tv series out of this sorry mess, and some production company or other has bought the rights to his life story. If they do it properly, they will include some footage of that Beveren game where once Liverpool supersub David Fairclough missed a sitter for the away team at the very end of the game.

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                                        #44
                                        That photo is brilliant. Looks like he is going to deflect the ball away using only willpower and shouting.

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                                          #45
                                          There's https://www.theguardian.com/football...sstory.sport17

                                          and also http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/uk-news...-jailed-740390

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                                            #46
                                            Long time, no see. Welcome back.

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                                              #47
                                              The thing with Llewellyn was a shocker. Lewie was one of us. He wasn't one of those bastards who went round casing joints for burgulars.

                                              Maybe I imagined this, but didn't Bobby Gould, during one of his spells as manager of Bristol Rovers, have some bloke on trial who was still serving a sentence? At Leyhill Oen Prison or something? Looked liked Dave out of Soft Cell?

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                                                #48
                                                Those FA Cup reunions and BBC flashbacks will now be a little more awkward ...

                                                Ricky George sent to prison for money laundering.

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                                                  #49
                                                  Notts had Lee Hughes who did 4 years for causing death by dangerous driving.

                                                  The list from the NFL is long and dishonorable.

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                                                    #50
                                                    Not my club, certainly, but didn't QPR have a player named Mark Dennis who did a spell as a guest of Her Majesty's?

                                                    Seem to remember a Wigan player who got sent down for beating down a young woman in a nightclub because she wasn't impressed enough to screw him.

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