When it comes to stories about football and footballers, you will often think of those that involve at least some small degree of success.
Perhaps your mind will turn to stories you can read about elsewhere on this site, such as how Sir Kenny Dalglish came to represent everything good about Liverpool FC, or how Sir Alex Ferguson almost single-handedly built Manchester United into a winning machine.
It is very unlikely that the tale of Alexandre Villaplane will enter your thoughts, in spite of the fact that his might well be one of the most fascinating tales of all. How did a captain of the French national team end up executed for committing treason?
Villaplane’s Football Career
Alexandre Villaplane was born in Algiers on the 24th of December 1904. In 1921, his football career began when he was signed to play for the French team Sète, remaining there for three years. In 1927, he began playing for Nîmes, moving to Racing Club de France two years later and staying there until 1932.
At that point, Villaplane moved to Antibes when the club was in the first professional championship in France, enjoying one season with them prior to being signed by OGC Nice. Another one-year spell saw him move on again, this time to play for Hispano-Bastidienne, which proved to be his final club.
Such was the ability displayed by Villaplane that he was called up to the France national team and played for them during the 1928 Summer Olympics. Two years later and France went to the World Cup in Uruguay, the first time that the tournament had taken place. France were one of just four teams from Europe that made the trip out to South America, where Villaplane was made captain.
Sadly for him and the rest of Les Bleus’ squad, they won just one of their three group stage games and were eliminated, finishing in third place behind Argentina and Chile. Still, Villaplane had the honour of being the captain of his nation at a World Cup.
Villaplane the Criminal
It is, perhaps, somewhat unsurprising that Villaplane’s career was far from whiter than white. Whilst at Antibes, he was believed to be involved in the match-fixing scandal that resulted in his team having their title stripped away from them, but he was only given a small penalty.
As his interest in football waned, he began to get into horse racing, seeing his final season in the sport with Hispano-Bastidienne brought to a premature end when he was sentenced to prison for his role in a horse race-fixing scandal. When World War Two broke out, Villaplane became involved in the black market in Paris, including racketeering local Jewish merchants.
Having been sent to prison in 1940 for possession of stolen goods, he came to the attention of the Carlingue, a French organisation that the Reich Security Main Office had formed for the purposes of counterinsurgency. Known to locals as the ‘French Gestapo’, it was run by local gangsters with whom Villaplane soon became more readily involved.
By 1944, he had become the head of one part of the North African Brigade, a criminal organisation that collaborated with the Nazis. He was soon given both the uniform and the rank of an SS-Untersturmführer, earning the nickname of ‘SS Mohammed’ because of the fierce nature of his recruits.
Executed for Treason
Villaplane’s section of the North African Brigade was given the duty of flushing out members of the Resistance in the French region of Périgueux before moving to Eymet. In Eymet, he negotiated the lives of more than 50 hostages for money.
On the 11th of June 1944, just days after the massacre at Oradour-sur-Glane that saw nearly 650 men, women and children executed, he oversaw the execution of 52 people in the commune of Mussidan. Claims were made that he was involved in the shooting of some of the people himself. No one was overly heartbroken when Villaplane was caught by the Allied authorities.
On the first of December 1944, Alexandre Villaplane was sentenced to death for being directly involved in the killing of at least ten people. He was to be executed by firing squad, with the date for his execution set as the 27th of December 1944. Three days after Villaplane’s 40th birthday, he was lined up at Fort de Montrouge in Arcueil alongside Pierre Bonny, a corrupt police officer, and career criminal Henri Lafont, the former of whom Villaplane had once been the chauffeur for.
The three men were killed by firing squad, representing a tragic end to a life filled with unsavoury moments for a man who had once been the captain of the France national team.