Robert Budzynski, former Lens and Nantes player, eleven times French international in the 1960s, died Monday at the age of 83, AFP learned from his family. This defender then became sports director of FC Nantes, where he remained for 35 years.
Sick, his state of health had deteriorated lately, he died late Monday afternoon.
Born in Pas-de-Calais and trained in Lens, “Bud” lived the rest of his life in the service of FC Nantes.
Central defender, he led the two campaigns of the first titles of champion of France of the “Canaries”, in 1965 and 1966, with the team trained by José Arribas, the initiator of the “Nantes game”.
His playing career was abruptly halted by a tibia-fibula fracture at the age of 28, from which he was never able to fully recover.
He was then the club’s sporting director for a long time, a position that was very new in French clubs in the early 1970s, which he helped to define.
Budzynski was one of the builders of the teams of “Coco” Suaudeau champions in 1980 and 1983, then especially of the legendary FC Nantes of 1995 with Patrice Loko, Christian Karembeu, Nicolas Ouédec and Raynald Pedros, champion by losing only one match.
As a sports director, he notably unearthed Vahid Halilhodzic in the former Yugoslavia, Jorge Burruchaga at Independiente or the Chadian Japhet Ndoram in Cameroon, at Tonnerre de Yaoundé.
At the training center he participated in the hatching of Marcel Desailly or Didier Deschamps, current coach of the Blues, and of the champion generation in 1995.
Bud played eleven times for the France team, including the three matches of the 1966 World Cup, where he notably led with Robert Herbin and Jacky Simon the rebellion of the players against coach Henri Guérin and his assistants asking to play the last in zone, as in Nantes, and not to individual marking, without preventing the defeat against England (2-0) and elimination in the first round.