The Terraces
The ink — every line and halftone dot holds at full size

The Eleven

The France Eleven at the Inter-Allied Games, 1919

France’s soldier team, days before it lost the final to Czechoslovakia three to two.

Work
press photograph
Maker
Agence Rol
Date
1919
Ground
Stade Pershing, Bois de Vincennes, Paris
Era
The interwar game · 1919–1930
Source
Bibliothèque nationale de France, Gallica · via Wikimedia Commons
Eight months after the armistice, a final.

Format

The full-resolution scan, colour-managed to the source — yours to print, study, and explore.

Size

$29.00

The story

Stade Pershing, 29 June 1919: the football team of France at the Inter-Allied Games, photographed by Agence Rol. The Games ran from 22 June to 6 July 1919 in a stadium built for them by the American army with the YMCA, and only men who had served in the war could take part. The caption tells how it ended: France were beaten in the final by Czechoslovakia, three to two. Every man in this picture had been a soldier. Eight months after the armistice, they stood in a new stadium at the edge of Paris and played for their country.

See it on your wall

The piece, in the room it was made for

The France Eleven at the Inter-Allied Games, 1919, printed large and framed — in the den, the club bar, the supporters’ bar. Every edition ships ready to become the piece the room is built around.

The France Eleven at the Inter-Allied Games, 1919 framed on the wall
The France Eleven at the Inter-Allied Games, 1919 framed on the wall
The France Eleven at the Inter-Allied Games, 1919 framed on the wall
The France Eleven at the Inter-Allied Games, 1919 framed on the wall

About this reproduction

  • A reproduction of press photograph — Agence Rol, 1919 — from the copy held by Bibliothèque nationale de France, Gallica · via Wikimedia Commons. The source. The work was published before 1931 and is public-domain verified.
  • Printed faithful to that source scan — restore honestly, disclose always. We do not re-colour it, complete it, or interpret it; the piece you receive is the image as it survives, halftone grain honored as history, not damage.
  • Printed to order on museum-grade cotton-rag stock with pigment inks — the pairing is rated 100+ years.
  • Colour-managed to the source; the tone of the paper and the ink is the period’s, not ours.
  • Ships in 5–10 business days, rolled in a heavy-wall tube (framed editions ship flat-packed).
  • If it arrives less than perfect, we reprint or refund — your choice.

Why our pieces cost more than a poster: a poster is a mass run on wood-pulp stock, colour-corrected to whatever flattered the press that day. This is one sheet, pulled for you, at a size where the maker’s hand is visible — the linework, the halftone grain, the lettering — on materials made to outlast their owner.

From the same hand

The Bordeaux Ground, 1908 — glass plate negative, Agence Rol, Agence Rol, 1908

Agence Rol · 1908

The Bordeaux Ground, 1908

The earliest surviving Rol plate of the French game — a provincial ground before the crowds arrived.

Everything starts on a field with a rope round it.
Lisbon and Barcelona in Paris, Boxing Day 1920 — glass plate negative, Agence Rol, 26 December 1920, Agence Rol, 1920

Agence Rol · 1920

Lisbon and Barcelona in Paris, Boxing Day 1920

A Portuguese club against a Catalan one, in France, two days after Christmas — the game already stateless.

The rules travelled faster than anything else Britain exported.
An English Club in Paris, May 1921 — glass plate negative, Agence Rol, 15 May 1921, Agence Rol, 1921

Agence Rol · 1921

An English Club in Paris, May 1921

A London side lines up at the Bergeyre — the missionary fixture, photographed at last.

Football was taught by demonstration, on tour, in the spring.