Ernest Weber (footballer)
[5] Having been a former teammate of Fraysse, Weber described him years later as a "loud-mouthed, abrupt, violent", but also an exciting leader of men and a great team captain.
[11] During half-time, however, Gaston Peltier managed to find a former CF player among the many spectators, Weber, who was described in the press as "ancient" not because of his age, since he was still only 23, but because he had not played a single match for at least three years, since 1897.
Following the success of a match between a "mixed" French team and the English club Corinthian, a club specializing in European tours, a handful of patrons, including Weber, created an entity to repeat the effort, the so-called Société d’Encouragement Football Association (SEFA), an external body independent of the USFSA, the then sports governing body in France.
[4][13] In the following month, on 16 April, SEFA assembled a French team to face Corinthians, which was welcomed to Paris by a reception committee that was made up of the most notable figures in French football at the time, including Weber, Gilon (SEFA), William Sleator (The White Rovers), Walter Hewson (Cook et Cie house), Philip Tomalin, Alfred Tunmer, Jack Wood, Shepherd (Williams house), Georges Duhamel, the Paris Committee of the USFSA, United SC, and the newspapers L'Auto and La Vie au grand air.
[14] In addition to Club Français, some sources have stated that Weber also played as a forward at United SC, a club of English and Swiss immigrants;[13][a][b] however, this Weber was a different person, because on 1 May 1904, while the player was helping United SC, the champions of the USFSA, to a 5–1 win over Étoile des deux lacs, the champions of the FGSPF, the journalist was in Brussels, as the correspondent for L'Auto in the inaugural match of the French national team against Belgium, so he could write the technical summary of the game, which was publishing the next day.
[16][17] For many years, this short article from Weber was commonly accepted as the only source of reference relating France's debut, until another report was found in 2020, in a non-sports daily newspaper, La Presse, under the signature "OFF-SIDE", which was the pseudonym of Robert Guérin, founder of FIFA.
[19] Despite the withdrawals, the French squad arrived in Brussels with 12 men, and after much discussion between the players, Guérin, and Weber, it all came down to a coin toss between Jacques Davy and Emile Fontaine, which was won by the former, while the latter was never able to become an international.
[22] Following Guérin's withdrawal in early 1906, the helm of the national team was given to André Billy and André Espir, and when they made their debut in a friendly against Belgium on 22 April, they asked Weber for help, since he was the only one from that trio who had watched the previous two Franco-Belgian meetings, thus having a valuable input, and indeed, Weber had noted that Belgian's full-back Edgard Poelmans constantly delivered precise passes to his forwards, so he had the idea of intercepting them, an excellent avant-garde idea that never came to fruition because the captain of the French team, Pierre Allemane, forgot to give France's winger Raymond Jouve the instructions he had received from either Weber or Espir: to mark and hinder Poelmans; France lost 0–5.
[26] In 1905, Bayrou captained his side Gallia Club to a triumph in the final of the 1905 USFSA Football Championship, but Weber was not gentle in describing this victory snatched with a goal from Raymond Jouve in the 118th minute: "Two hours!
[30] Just three months later, in January 1907, several journalists discredited and mocked an FGSPF team, made up of the best players from the patronages, during the preview of a friendly match against North London AFC; Weber condoned these comments as "Pestilence!
[31] The French team ended up winning 4–2, with Weber blaming this result on the English forward line being too individualistic, stating that "perhaps they had been assured that in France, the columnists mainly sing the praises of individuals and they were looking to be mentioned.
[6] This fact remained uncontested until 1959, over half a century later, when Georges Duhamel published his book Le football français, ses début, in which he recounts this episode without giving details on the reasons for the cancellation of the first play-off.
[6] In April 1907, on the occasion of a match involving Vieilles Gloires ("Old Glories"), Weber stated that the first players of Club Français "produced a beautiful series of efforts, showed a magnificent disinterested ardor, who ensured the success of association football from its beginnings in France".
[35] In the chronicle of this match, Weber, who was described as "the father of Vieuix Débris", was reported to have enjoyed "the success of this day, which will be annual and thus certainly provoke the return to sport of more people who considered themselves too old".
[40][42] In 1908, Weber and Henri Sonnet, a fellow journalist, published a work listing all the sports records called Les Tablettes Sportives, which was very well received by Frantz Reichel of Le Figaro, who described it as "a booklet of undeniable utility for all sportsmen",[43] and also by Maurice Chérié of L'Aurore, who stated that Weber and Sonnet "grouped the documents briefly and clearly, classified in a simple and logical order, finally sifted through with rigorous accuracy".
