# Victor Sergent

Victor Léon Bentall-Sergent (9 August 1886 – 28 December 1923) was a French footballer who played as a defender for Racing Club de France, Stade Raphaëlois, and the French national team between 1906 and 1913.
He is one of the few players to win the USFSA Football Championship with two different clubs, having done so with Racing in 1907, and with Raphaëlois in 1912.

## Early life and education

Victor Léon Bentall-Sergent was born in Saint-Raphaël, Var on 9 August 1886, as the son of Joseph Léon Sergent (1861–1931), an architect who designed and oversaw the construction of a villa in Côte d'Azur at the request of the Bentall family, which manufactured agricultural machinery, and which had chosen that region as a holiday destination, a common choice among the wealthy English families of that time. During this process, Sergent met the family's daughter, Catherine Mary Bentall (1860–1952), who fell in love with her villa's architect, so the two married in 1885, and in the following year, Sergent made the declaration of Victor's birth at the town hall, but, contrary to the customs of the time, the name of the mother precedes that of the father. However, the player's license only bears the name of Sergent, and the sports newspapers have always referred to him only by the name of Sergent.
Victor was the eldest of four siblings, Marguerite Léonie (1888–1966), Raoul (1889–1924), and Jean Noël (1890–1933), all of whom studied in England, developing a deep interest in football while there, and then playing this sport for the Stade Raphaëlois, a club created in 1905, shortly before Sergent's 19th birthday. Sergent attended the infamous Dragon School in Oxford until the age of 13, then the Winchester College, one of the oldest in England, before returning to France, but this time to the capital, to pass his baccalaureate at the Lycée Saint-Louis, then to undertake engineering studies at the Ecole Violet, a school of Electricity and Mechanics located in the 15th arrondissement of Paris, between 1905 and 1908. In October 1908, he was incorporated in October 1908 in Grasse.

## Club career

Sergent began his career at the football team of Winchester College. He joined the ranks of the Racing Club de France in 1906, while at the same time his brothers Raoul (nicknamed Dick) and Noël were in the Stade Raphaëlois team, which proves that the whole family was repatriated from England at the same time. Initially in Racing's fourth team, he soon established himself at the back, thanks to his "great skill and incomparable confidence, it is rare to see him miss his shot", and to his great mass, because although he was 1.75 meters tall, he weighed 80 kilograms in 1908. Together with Pierre Allemane, André Puget, the Matthey brothers (Fernand and Raoul), and captain Alfred Tunmer, Sergeant was a member of the Racing team that reached back-to-back finals of the French Championship in 1907 and 1908, both of which ending in losses to RC Roubaix. In the former, he started in the back alongside Allemane, who at the time was the captain of the French national team. Sergent also helped Racing win back-to-back Coupe Dewar titles in 1906 and 1907, helping his side to keep a clean-sheet in the latter final, which ended in a 2–0 win over Olympique lillois on 28 April.
After completing his military service, Sergent remained on the Côte d'Azur with his family, and therefore took out a license at Stade Raphaëlois, to join his two brothers, eventually becoming the club's captain in the early 1910s. The club had a very English aura, because alongside the three Sergent brothers (all trained in English colleges) played 4 other English players, who inevitably turned this newly founded club into the best in the whole of the South-East, thus qualifying for the 1912 USFSA Football Championship, where they knocked out the defending champions Stade Helvétique de Marseille in the round of 16. Sergent played a crucial role in helping the team win the title, keeping a clean-sheet in the semifinals against US Tourquennoise (2–0), and then beating AS Française 2–1 in the final at Stade Colombes on 28 April. After the final, the French press stated that he was "admirably skillful, all attacks failed on him", and "he had enormous influence over his teammates, they all obeyed their captain".

## International career

In his first two appearances for France, Sergent helped France to achieve its first-ever away victory on 21 April 1907, against Belgium at Uccle (2–1), followed by another away victory on 8 March 1908, this time against Switzerland at Geneva. This was a historic feat, especially considering that in the previous three matches, France had conceded a whopping 27 goals, so the inclusion of more powerful defenders like Sergent and Jules Verlet paid off. In 1908, he was selected for the French squad that was going to compete in the football tournament of the 1908 Olympic Games in London, but Sergent was unavailable due to military service, which saved him from a humiliating 17–1 loss to Denmark.
On 20 February 1912, Sergent played for France in an unofficial match against Catalonia, helping his side to a 7–0 win.
Eight months after captaining Stade Raphaëlois to become French champions, Sergent was called up for his fifth and last international cap on 16 February 1913, and in order to honor it, he had to travel by train sixteen hours to join his teammates in Paris, and then to Brussels for a friendly match against Belgium, in which Sergent had a large share of responsibility in his side's 3–0 loss.

## Later life

After retiring at the end of the 1912–13 season, Sergent traveled to Algeria and Tunisia, then returned to Heybridge, in Essex, at the beginning of 1914, because, except for his younger brother Noël, who was still playing for Stade Raphaëlois in 1914, the entire Bentall-Sergent family had returned to England, perhaps because they sensed that war was imminent. However, he was in France when the First World War broke out, so he decided to enlist in the British Army, and was thus reported as a deserter in France from 9 September 1914 until August 1920, when this infamous mention was removed from his military record, "having been recognized as mobilized in the English Army from 28 September 1914 to 6 September 1919".
During the War, Sergent was sent to Basra in Iraq, where the English forces were pushing back the Turks who were colonizing the region, going up to the Caspian Sea, and therefore, he never fought on French soil. During the War, he got close to having a leg amputated. He only returned to France after 1920, to join his family in Arlay, where his father had bought a farm that he had renovated, adding a tower and mullioned windows, and giving it the high-sounding name of Château de Proby. There, his brother Dick had created a transport company (and it was at the wheel of one of his coaches that he died of a heart attack in 1924) and Victor worked alongside him, having never used his engineering degree.

## Death

During the winter of 1923, Sergent had a sudden bout of pneumonia, dying of pulmonary congestion on 23 December 1923, at the age of 37. He was then buried in Arlay, and his brother Dick soon joined him.

## Honours

Racing Club de France
* USFSA Football Championship: 1907; runner-up 1908
* Dewar Cup: 1906, 1907
Stade Raphaëlois
* USFSA Football Championship: 1912