Eugène Maës (15 September 1890 – 30 March 1945) was a French footballer who played as a forward for Patronage Olier, Red Star, and the France national team between 1905 and the outbreak of the First World War in 1914, scoring 15 international goals in just 11 caps.

[7] He played a crucial role in helping Olier win the FGSPF Football Championship in 1908, beating Cadets de Bretagne 8–0 in the final held in Rennes on 26 April.

[9] His goalscoring prowess eventually drew the attention of Jules Rimet's Red Star, a newly ambitious club that had recently founded the Ligue de Football Association (LFA) and which was about to open a new stadium in Saint-Ouen, so they signed him in 1910, aged only 19, to assure goals to the team.

[9] Maës quickly became one of the most important players of the great Red Star team of the early 1910s, which included the likes of René Fenouillère, Pierre Chayriguès, and the captain Lucien Gamblin.

[13] In the subsequent Trophée de France in 1912, he lost the final to Étoile des deux lacs [fr], during which Maës scored his team's only goal in a 1–3 loss.

The club took advantage of their 1912 LFA victory to meet the greatest European teams of the time, including a narrow defeat (2–1) at home against the English professionals Tottenham in 1913.

[1][4][9] In his third cap on 9 April 1911, Maës scored his first goal for France, netting a brace in a 2–2 draw with Italy, each time through the "goalkeeper charge", even when the latter had blocked the ball.

[1] Like so many of his teammates, Maës was mobilized during the First World War, fighting in Belgium, where he was pierced by a bullet in the chest at the very beginning of the conflict, on 29 August 1914.

[18] Through his experience, he quickly established himself as the team captain, which at the time had the duty of dictating the tactics to be followed and making up the line-ups since the figure of coach as we know it today did not yet exist.

[20] While playing at Stade Malherbe, Maës, who was a good swimmer and practiced diving, took over the management of the Berteaux swimming school on the banks of the Orne in 1920, before replacing his father-in-law as its owner in 1924 and enventually renaming it le Lido.

[21] No longer able to stand her attitude, Maës, who always had a "strong personality", declared his feelings to her, so she denounced him to the Gestapo for anti-German and Gaullist remarks, which led to his arrest in Caen on 21 June.