Claude Papi (16 April 1949 – 28 January 1983) was a French football

midfielder A midfielder is an outfield position in association football. Midfielders may play an exclusively defensive role, breaking up attacks, and are in that case known as defensive midfielders. As central midfielders often go across boundarie ...

who is regarded as the all-time best player for the

SC Bastia Sporting Club Bastiais ( co, Sporting Club di Bastia, commonly referred to as SC Bastia or simply Bastia) is a Corsican association football club based in Bastia on the island of Corsica. The club plays in Ligue 2, the second tier of French f ...

Playing career

Born in

Porto-Vecchio Porto-Vecchio (, ; it, Porto Vecchio or ; co, Portivechju or ) is a commune in the French department of Corse-du-Sud, on the island of Corsica. Porto-Vecchio is a medium-sized port city placed on a good harbor, the southernmost of the mars ...

, Corsica, Papi played his entire career for

. He led Bastia to the

1978 UEFA Cup Final The 1978 UEFA Cup Final was a football match played on 26 April 1978 and 9 May 1978 between PSV Eindhoven Philips Sport Vereniging (; en, Philips Sports Association ), abbreviated as PSV and internationally known as PSV Eindhoven (), is a D ...

, scoring seven goals that season. Papi remains the all-time leading scorer for Bastia with 134 goals in 479 games.

International career

Papi was a member of the France national team in the 1978 FIFA World Cup. His only World Cup appearance came in a 3–1 group match win against

Hungary Hungary ( hu, Magyarország ) is a landlocked country in Central Europe. Spanning of the Pannonian Basin, Carpathian Basin, it is bordered by Slovakia to the north, Ukraine to the northeast, Romania to the east and southeast, Serbia to the ...

Death

Papi died on 28 January 1983 at the age of 33 of a ruptured aneurysm.

Honours

Bastia * Ligue 2: 1967–68 *

Coupe de France The Coupe de France, formerly known as the Coupe Charles Simon, is the premier knockout cup competition in French football organized by the French Football Federation (FFF). It was first held in 1917 and is open to all amateur and profession ...

: 1980–81 * Challenge des champions: 1972 *

UEFA Cup A cup is an open-top used to hold hot or cold liquids for pouring or drinking; while mainly used for drinking, it also can be used to store solids for pouring (e.g., sugar, flour, grains, salt). Cups may be made of glass, metal, china, clay ...

runner-up: 1978

References

Papi's Career Stats & Accolades

External links