Lawrence "Law" Adam (11 June 1908 – 15 May 1941) was a Dutch-Swiss

football Football is a family of team sports that involve, to varying degrees, kick (football), kicking a football (ball), ball to score a goal (sports), goal. Unqualified, football (word), the word ''football'' generally means the form of football t ...

player who played as a forward. He was born in

Probolinggo Probolinggo (, , Javanese language, Javanese: ''Kuthå Pråbålinggå'') is a city on the north coast of East Java province, Indonesia. It covers an area of 56.676 sq. km, and had a population of 217,062 at the 2010 censusBiro Pusat Stati ...

Dutch East Indies The Dutch East Indies, also known as the Netherlands East Indies (; ), was a Dutch Empire, Dutch colony with territory mostly comprising the modern state of Indonesia, which Proclamation of Indonesian Independence, declared independence on 17 Au ...

and died in

Surabaya Surabaya is the capital city of East Java Provinces of Indonesia, province and the List of Indonesian cities by population, second-largest city in Indonesia, after Jakarta. Located on the northeastern corner of Java island, on the Madura Strai ...

. Law Adam is reportedly the first European footballer to use the Scissors move, also known as the ''step over'', earning the nickname "Adam the Scissorsman" in the 1920s and 1930s.

Club career

Adam started his football career for HVV Den Haag in the

Netherlands , Terminology of the Low Countries, informally Holland, is a country in Northwestern Europe, with Caribbean Netherlands, overseas territories in the Caribbean. It is the largest of the four constituent countries of the Kingdom of the Nether ...

. At the age of 19, he started his study in

Zürich Zurich (; ) is the list of cities in Switzerland, largest city in Switzerland and the capital of the canton of Zurich. It is in north-central Switzerland, at the northwestern tip of Lake Zurich. , the municipality had 448,664 inhabitants. The ...

, where he played for

Grasshopper Club Zürich Grasshopper Club Zurich (GCZ), commonly referred to as Grasshopper Club or simply just GC, is a professional sports club, multisports club based in Zürich, Zurich, Switzerland. They are nicknamed the ''Grasshoppers'' or sometimes just ''Hopper ...

. He made his debut for

Switzerland Switzerland, officially the Swiss Confederation, is a landlocked country located in west-central Europe. It is bordered by Italy to the south, France to the west, Germany to the north, and Austria and Liechtenstein to the east. Switzerland ...

in a match against

Austria Austria, formally the Republic of Austria, is a landlocked country in Central Europe, lying in the Eastern Alps. It is a federation of nine Federal states of Austria, states, of which the capital Vienna is the List of largest cities in Aust ...

in 1929. The Dutch national team visited Switzerland a year later, and Adam was invited to play for his native Netherlands. Switzerland won the match 6–3. Law Adam would play eleven matches for the Netherlands, scoring six goals. He scored both goals in the 2–0 victory of the Netherlands over

Germany Germany, officially the Federal Republic of Germany, is a country in Central Europe. It lies between the Baltic Sea and the North Sea to the north and the Alps to the south. Its sixteen States of Germany, constituent states have a total popu ...

Düsseldorf Düsseldorf is the capital city of North Rhine-Westphalia, the most populous state of Germany. It is the second-largest city in the state after Cologne and the List of cities in Germany with more than 100,000 inhabitants, seventh-largest city ...

in 1932. In the spring of 1933, Adam returned to HVV Den Haag, but heart problems forced him to end his career a few months later, at the age of 24.

Death

Adam died in 1941, at the age of 32, during a friendly match between football clubs Thor and Anasher in

in the

. Adam had scored two goals and given three assists during the match, and left the pitch in the eighth minute of the second half, with his hand on his heart. Referee W.A. Lambeck wrote about the death of Adam in magazine ''De Scheidsrechter''. He recalled asking Adam if it was serious, to which Adam had replied: "No, but my heart is playing up again and they've got a nice lead, so I can get dressed now." Lambeck continued: "When I entered the dressing room after the final whistle, Adam was on the massage table, all blue. The doctor and the heart specialist, who were immediately summoned, tried to revive the spirits by giving him injections in the heart area. Half an hour later, they could only establish death."

References

External links

* {{DEFAULTSORT:Adam, Law 1908 births 1941 deaths Dutch men's footballers Swiss men's footballers Dutch people of Indonesian descent Sportspeople of Indonesian descent Netherlands men's international footballers Switzerland men's international footballers Grasshopper Club Zurich players Association football players who died while playing People from Situbondo Regency Dual internationalists (men's football) Dutch expatriate men's footballers Expatriate men's footballers in Switzerland Dutch expatriate sportspeople in Switzerland Men's association football forwards Sport deaths in Indonesia HVV Den Haag players 20th-century Swiss sportsmen 20th-century Dutch sportsmen