The E.Y.E. Blog project

Vicente Lizarazu was born on December 9, 1969 in Saint-Jean-de-Luz, Basque Country in France). He is a now retired football left-defender player who played for the Munich Bayern for 9 years, and played for 3 other professional teams, as well as the French national team. Being such a successful French player, he is now a football legend in France and he is widely considered as one of the greatest left-backs of all time.
He has been a supporter of the Surfrider Foundation in Europe for 20 years.

Following the 1995-96 season, Lizarazu left the ‘Girondins’ football team of Bordeaux to join the Bilbao Athletic, playing in a Spanish League club. In Bilbao, the Basque identity is extremely strong, that tradition and their will makes it  only possible for Basque players to be recruited.
Lizarazu became the first non-Spanish Basque player to play in Bilbao Athletic.( although Spanish basque people and French Basque people  have the same language!) It was his first experience outside France to show and to be recognized as one of the best football-player defenders in Europe. Nevertheless, he did not agree with the Bilbao coach Luis Fernandez, and consequently he didn’t play much. Thus the following year,he was recruited by the Munich Bayern team. Lizarazu joined Germany, a country where very few French players have managed to adapt themselves to the life and playing football over there. and illustrated his way of playing and adapting himself brilliantly .
The Bayern team did not get the final title of champion of Germany one year, but the German Cup was a first victory for the French football player. Over seven seasons, the Bayern team with Lizarazu won six impressive championship titles in Germany, and the Champion League (in 2001): four German Cups, five League Cups and one International Cup in 1998.

Lizarazu is often invited on TV shows now to express his ideas about surfing, S.D and his strong respect of Nature and Personal sustainable development, since he now practises surfing very often as a balance in his life. He’s quite humble, a real gentleman!

by Olivier Darricau, Anthony Dufourcq, Jonathan Castets, Jérémy Barrès and Arnaud Duhin

( photos taken from professional Google websites on Bixente Lizarazu, subsequently with his agreement)

This entry was posted on Tuesday, March 10th, 2009 at 12:59 pm and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.