13 July, 1930 is the day, it all began. This date marks the beginning of what would become world’s most extravagant event with millions of screaming fans and fan-chants. “Goal!!” would become an emotion. But somehow the name of the man who started all these got buried under the dust, forgotten.
Lucien Laurent was the man who scored the first goal ever in the history of the FIFA tournament. But back in the day FIFA was not a big deal at all, with only 13 teams playing as against 32 in the current scenario. Not many people knew about this tournament; they were not even interested. Football was in its infancy when Laurent had achieved this feat without being aware of how big the succeeding years would be for FIFA.
He even stated in an interview:
"Of course, back then I couldn't have imagined the significance the goal would have. We didn't even know the World Cup would last. I remember when I got home, there was just a tiny mention in one of the papers. Soccer was in its infancy.."
The tournament was a small affair and Lucien recalls how they traveled to Uruguay by a ship along with their opponents Belgium and Romania. He further shared, it took them two weeks to reach their destination and every morning they used to have a training session on the deck and then used to run on the spot in the afternoon. Back in the day, the struggle was real and Laurent had to take leave from his company “Peugeot” (a car manufacturing company), which was an unpaid leave, in order to go and play in the tournament. Even the French Football Federation paid only a minimal expense to the team players who played as amateur players.
Lauren’s goal against Mexico came in the 19th minute after right winger Ernest Liberati had pulled it back from the goal-line following centre-back Chantrel's long ball. However, the veteran footballer shared that the goal was not much of an affair in the pre-world war era and in France only one paper had a tiny mention of their achievements. Football, being still in its nascent stage was not celebrated much.
Unfortunately, Laurent could not play in the final game of the French campaign after getting injured against Argentina in their third game of the campaign. The French journey ended after losing in their successive group league matches against Argentina and Chile.
Clubs for which Laurent Played:
Lucien started his career under a semi-professional team Cercle Athlétique de Paris (CA Paris) between 1921-1930, followed by FC Sochaux-Montbéliard . He also played for teams Club Français , FC Mulhouse, Rennes, Strasbourg, Toulouse FC, Besançon RC
Laurent passed away on 22 April, 2005 at the age of 97
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