Henri Jooris

Henri Jooris (23 April 1879 – 29 March 1940) was a French businessman, industrialist, and sports manager. He is widely regarded as one of the most important figures of football in the Nord in the first half of the 20th century.

Throughout his life, he combined economic commitments with several sporting functions in the management of sports clubs, federations, and leagues, serving as the president of both Olympique Lillois (1919–32) and the Northern Football Association League (LNFA, 1919–24), the vice-president of the French Football Federation (1919–24), and was also a benefactor member of ten sports companies.

As a businessman, he was nicknamed the "first baker of France", being one of the great bosses of the North of France between the two world wars. On 19 February 1911, Billy and Jooris witnessed OL win the first title of its history, the USFSA Northern Championship, following a 3–0 victory over RC Roubaix, thus finally putting an end to the invincibility of Roubaix and US Tourquennoise, but despite the club's success, Billy lost the loyalty of OL's board of directors to Jooris, who was named the club's vice-presidency in 1911, which caused the former to resign and create a rival team in 1912, Club Lillois, taking half the team with him. Jooris thus replaced him as "de facto" leader of the club before becoming its official president in May 1919, after its merger with Billy's Club Lillois. (Between 1911 and 1919, OL's president apparently was a certain Dr.) Eugene Hennart, but the exact dates of his term remain unknown. The final was delayed 15 minutes because OL's leaders threaten to forfeit if Albert Clark, who two weeks prior had played for Plumstead, takes part in the match, but in the end, Jooris, while having reservations, accepted the fight. This selection was made up of the best players from the biggest clubs in the Nord, especially the three flagship clubs of the Lille metropolis: RC Roubaix, US Tourquennoise, and Olympique Lillois. and four months later, in May 1914, a team made up of Northerners asserted their superiority over the Normans (5–0) in the so-called Coupe Henri Jooris.

Jooris was the secretary of the Lions des Flandres between 1912 and 1914, and as such, he was the one in charge of setting up schedules and organizing trips, including one to Bilbao in May 1914, and he also had a big say on the composition of the team, together with the coach Fernand Desrousseaux, which resulted in the selection of several players from OL. This allowed many of them to subsequently reach the national team, so during this period, OL had as many as eight international players in its ranks (Degouve, Ducret, Gravelines, Montagne, Six (Belgium), Eloy, Chandelier, Voyeux); on one occasion, in a friendly match against Switzerland on 9 March 1913, France fielded four OL players at the same time. This happened because several Parisian players had withdrawn from the match at the last minute (there was no contractual obligation at the time), with Jooris then helping the selection committee to patch up the team by convincing the OL players to travel to Geneva in exchange for a bonus, which turned out to be two bottles of champagne. His influence in the national team did not stop there, since OL's home stadium, whose improvement was partly financed by Jooris, hosted France's international match against Belgium on 25 January 1914. An officer during the First World War, he became the founding president of the Sports Committee of the Invaded Regions.

When professionalism in French football was finally established in early 1932, Jooris welcomed this outcome, but deplored the fact that an intermediate solution could not be found, stating that he "would have liked us to proceed in stages". For all these reasons, on 9 March 1932, Jooris handed his resignation to the board of directors of OL, and the club's vice-president, the banker Gabriel Caullet, succeeded him.

There were, therefore, two Lille clubs in the first professional French championship in 1932–33, which was won by OL, thus becoming the first official champions of France.

Political career For some, football appears to be the perfect authoritarian sport because as early as 1901, the newspaper Tous les sports proclaimed: "The republic works very nice in politics, but on the football field, there is only one form of government that is capable of leading a team to victory: it is Caesarism, in other words, absolute power in the hands of the leader", and Jooris quickly realized that this was also the best form of government outside the pitches, hence why he was politically involved in the extreme right, joining and supporting the Jeunesses Patriotes, which in the 1930s, were inspired by the authoritarian methods and practices of fascist regimes.

In May 2023, his grandson Michel-Henri Jooris attended a meeting organized by OL to celebrate the 90th birthday of its triumph at the inaugural edition of the French professional championship.