Laurent Blanc

Encyclopedia : L : LA : LAU : Laurent Blanc

Laurent Blanc (born November 19, 1965 in Alès) is a French football defender, who scored the first golden goal in World Cup history in the 1998 World Cup.

In his club career from 1983 to 2003, Blanc played for Montpellier, Napoli, Nimes, Saint Etienne, Auxerre, Barcelona, Olympique Marseille, Inter Milan, and Manchester United.

For France, Blanc won the 1998 World Cup and Euro 2000. He was also well-known for kissing good friend and goalkeeper Fabien Barthez's head before the start of every match, supposedly for good luck. Overall, he recorded 97 caps and scored 16 goals for his country, a very large number for a defender. The most important of those must be the first ever World Cup golden goal, in the second round against Paraguay on June 28, 1998. Blanc also played in Euro 92, Euro 96 and Euro 2000.

He missed the World Cup final in 1998 after getting sent off in the semi-final against Croatia.

From Wikipedia, the Free Encyclopedia. Original article here. Support Wikipedia by contributing or donating.
All text is available under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License See Wikipedia Copyrights for details.