Georges Duhamel

Georges Duhamel (1879 – unknown) was a French footballer who played as a defender for CA Neuilly in the mid-1890s.

In 1931, he published a book that recounts in detail the beginnings of football in France entitled Le Football français, ses débuts, which remains one of the most important and insightful testimonies of this period because, on some occasions, this book is its only source of reference.

Sporting career Early years Born in 1879, Together with Georges Caizac, Georges Garnier, and Lucien Huteau, he was a member of the small group of middle school students from the Parisian Lycée Chaptal who, in early 1893, founded a club called created Etoile Sportive Parisiennne, one of the first football clubs in the French capital, which set up on the pitch at the Château de Madrid in the Bois de Boulogne. The 15-year-old Duhamel was unable to provide an account of this match in his book, having flu and having been forbidden to go out by his mother.

At the start of the 1894–95 season, Neuilly notably met Standard AC on three consecutive Sundays on the pitch of the Seine Velodrome, conceding between 12 and 23 goals each time. Neuilly's main players at the time were Duhamel, Caizac, the Gaston brothers, and the Scot Howatson, who played under the name of Stevens because his father forbade him to play on Sundays, the Lord's Day. In his book, Duhamel admitted that it was a "scheme and favoritism".

Paris Star On 4 April 1897, Duhamel started for Paris Star as a midfielder in the semifinals of the inaugural edition of the Coupe Manier, which ended in an 8–1 loss to the eventual champions Club Français. In the following year, on 28 March, he started in the final of the 1898 Coupe Manier at the Vélodrome de Vincennes, which ended in another resounding loss (10–0) to Club Français. At some point at the turn of the century, Duhamel became the president of Paris Star, replacing Manier, who had established Coupe Manier, and thus, in February 1903, he was the representative of Paris Star in the USFSA's football commission. Paris Star went on to be one of the founding members of Ligue de Football Association in 1910, and of the LFA's 14 members active between 1910 and 1919, only Duhamel was a member of the USFSA's football association committee in 1903.

Writing career In 1931, Duhamel published a book that recounts in detail the beginnings of football in France entitled Le Football français, ses débuts, which remains one of the most important and insightful testimonies of this period because, on some occasions, this book is its only source of reference.

In the 1930s, the manager of Arsenal Herbert Chapman is said to have introduced the WM formation, but in November 1935, Duhamel questioned Chapman's paternity in an article published in Le Matin, stating that "the W system does not date from the moment when, in 1932, Arsenal applied it with all its beauty. In 1925, the same year that the two-man offside was introduced, the Scottish League teams immediately used the W formation and even WM". In this article, he was described as "a veteran of football in France and who knows the history of football better than all those who are currently championing the W system".

Works Le Football français, ses débuts (1931)