Stefan Dembicki

1936/49 RC Lens (FRA) 308 matches, 323 goals

(French D1: 169 games, 211 goals)

(French D2: 91 games, 46 goals)

(French Cup: 48 games, 81 goals)

With the National Team :

5 caps, 4 goals

Stefan Dembicki 

Born on 15 July 1913 in Marten (GER)

Died on 23 September 1985

French, Striker/Right-Winger

Nickname: "Stanis", "Roi Stanis"

Stefan Dembicki, also called Stanis, was born on July 15, 1913 in Marten, Germany. He also has Polish origins. He is an absolute legend of the northern French club RC Lens. A loyal player for this club, he is known for having scored sixteen goals in a single Coupe de France match in 1942, a record in the history of professional football.

Stefan Dembicki was born in a district of Dortmund in Germany to Polish parents. With a miner father, he moved with his parents while still young to the north of France, whose economy is based on work in the mines. Dembicki has a particular style, stocky, he weighs 80kg and 1m72. But that doesn't stop him from being a very fast player, capable of great sprints. First playing in the youth categories in the AS Sallaumines club, he then joined RC Lens which has just obtained its professional status by joining the 2nd French division.

Quite strong, the striker or sometimes right winger shines with great striking power. In 1936, at the age of 23, he finally joined the first team even though he had just been naturalized French. With his new nationality, the player will subsequently obtain selections for the Northern Team, the French Military Team and the French B Team.

During his first season with the RC Lens club (1936-37), he scored 23 goals in 31 second division matches and also scored 7 goals in 4 Coupe de France matches. With these impressive statistics, he establishes himself as one of the best attackers in the country.

In 1937, when the RC Lens club returned to the French D1, Dembicki had another good season, 14 goals in 28 championship matches, this time with 1 small goal in 2 Coupe de France matches. Lens is then a small team, which finishes 14th in a 16-player championship whose 2 worst teams are relegated, but the job is done, Lens is holding its own.

With players like Tony Marek, Ladislas Siklo and Viktor Spechtl, the RC Lens club has a very international team with a squad with great potential. The 1938-39 season saw the confirmation of great potential with 16 goals in 29 championship matches in addition to 2 goals in 3 Coupe de France matches. RC Lens finished in 7th place, a great achievement for this small club.

In 1939, the Second World War broke out, football competitions were interrupted, and he was enlisted in the French army. In 1940, he was imprisoned by the enemy. But he was released in 1942 after his employer, the Houillères du Bassin du Nord et du Pas-de-Calais, negotiated his release, in addition to those of many other employees.

He therefore really returned to the world of football during the 1941-42 season during which he was brilliant, surely the best French player of the period. With RC Lens, he shines in particular in the Coupe de France where he is perhaps the best player in the history of the competition individually. At the same time, he notably scored in the final of the occupied zone against OIC Lille (3-1 after) then during the support match of the “interzone final” against Red Star Olympique. The Lensois lost (1-1, then 2-5)6. This 1941-42 season was his best in the league with 47 goals scored, in the Coupe de France he had 19 goals in 8 matches!

But his best season in all competitions came the following year during the 1942-43 season where he was flamboyant. He scored 43 goals in 30 matches in Division 1 “North Zone”, a championship that his team won. It was also during this season that he set one of the greatest records in the history of football. During the first round of the Coupe de France against the amateur club Auby-Asturias, he scored 16 goals in a match won 32-0. He finished the season with 43 goals in 30 league matches, and 26 goals in 7 Coupe de France matches. The club won the semi-finals of the Coupe de France, then in a Coupe de France modified during the war, won the final of the Forbidden Zone, but lost 2-1 against the Girondins de Bordeaux in the interzone final while Dembicki is not present in the squad.

During the 1943-1944 season, like many of his teammates, he was integrated into the short-lived Lens-Artois federal team created by the Vichy regime. He scored 41 goals in 29 matches. His team won the French Federal Championship, despite one match less which was never played. In the Coupe de France, he scored 7 goals in 6 matches played. During the 1944-45 season, marked by the raging War, Dembicki scored 17 goals in the league and 10 in the Coupe de France.

After the liberation of France and the end of the war, Stanis continued his professional career at RC Lens, while working at Les Houillères as a miner. He scored 18 goals in 1945-1946, then 15 goals in 21 matches the following season, but the club was demoted to French D2. He will still extend his adventure for 2 more years with RC Lens. In 1948, his team reached the final of the Coupe de France. In the semi-final, he scored three times against SR Colmar (5-1 victory). Against Lille OSC, he equalized twice but could not prevent his team from losing 2-3. He left RC Lens the following year, aged 36 and injured, while the club won the D2 championship and obtained the hoped-for return to French D1. Subsequently he joined the RC Arras club, in the amateur divisions. In 2022, So Foot magazine ranks him in the top 1000 best players in the French championship, in 217th place, an honorable place for a player of whom we ultimately have very few traces due to the few period records. existing from a time of war, chaotic. Dembicki nevertheless remains perhaps the best player in the history of the Coupe de France, having scored 81 goals in 48 matches in the competition, a ratio of 1.65 goals per match in the competition.

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