Erhalten Sie Zugang zu diesem und mehr als 300000 Büchern ab EUR 5,99 monatlich.
- Herausgeber: Icon Books
- Kategorie: Lebensstil
- Serie: Luca Caioli
- Sprache: Englisch
- Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2018
FROM THE BESTSELLING AUTHOR OF MESSI AND RONALDO Quick, incisive and versatile, Antoine Griezmann is the ultimate modern forward. But did you know that he had to leave France in order to find a professional club willing to take a chance on him? Or that he wears the number 7 shirt as a tribute to his idol, David Beckham? Or that Real Sociedad fans came to affectionately refer to him as 'The Little Devil'? Find our about all this and more in Luca Caioli and Cyril Collot's tirelessly researched biography, featuring exclusive interviews with those who know him best. Includes all the action from the 2017/18 season and the 2018 World Cup
Sie lesen das E-Book in den Legimi-Apps auf:
Seitenzahl: 341
Das E-Book (TTS) können Sie hören im Abo „Legimi Premium” in Legimi-Apps auf:
Ähnliche
GRIEZMANN
Updated Edition
LUCA CAIOLI & CYRIL COLLOT
Contents
Chapter 1
A Family Passion
1950, Paços de Ferreira, Portugal. The story begins here, in a village 28 kilometres from Porto with 53,000 inhabitants, known as the Capital do Móvel (Capital of Furniture) thanks to its many furniture factories; it even has its own Ikea.
It is on 5 April in the Holy Year proclaimed by Pope Pius XII that the directors of the football section of the local scout troop realise that the moment has come to take things seriously. They decide, after decades of popular football without a real club or league participation, that it is time to roll up their sleeves.
They take it upon themselves to found the Futebol Clube Vasco de Gama. The name is both a tribute to the Portuguese navigator and explorer and a nod to the Club De Regatas Vasco de Gama in Rio de Janeiro, a Brazilian football institution founded in 1898 by Portuguese immigrants. In the 1940s and 50s, they set the Carioca championship ablaze. Two names stood out: Barbosa, the canariña keeper who would never be forgiven after the Maracanazo – the 1950 World Cup final loss to Uruguay – and Vavà, the striker who was part of the sing-song trio for the Brazilian national team: Didì, Vavà, Pelè. In short, the name chosen by the scouts had a ring to it and would bring them good luck.
Their strip was yellow, with a Maltese cross on the chest, blue shorts and socks. After registering its name, social status, colours and structure in black and white the club was now part of the Associação de Futebol do Porto. Then came the green light to renovate the pitches at Campo de Cavada and enrol in the regional championship. The team’s official debut was scheduled for 19 November 1950 at the ground in nearby Tapada. Vasco de Gama, or Vasquinho as it had been affectionately christened by its supporters, beat Lousada 2–1. In other words, they won the derby! (Lousada is a small town just seven kilometres from Paços de Ferreira).
It is well known that local rivalries were particularly strong in amateur football back then. It was Agostinho Alves, a capable striker, who scored the winning goal. He was one of the stars of the team, as were the goalkeeper Leão and the defender Amaro Lopes, who was known as Amaro da Cavada as he was born in the same part of town as the football ground. Within the family he was known as Tio Mário. He was 27. The team photo for the 1951–52 season shows him in the front row, kneeling as he holds the ball. He has black hair, slicked back with pomade, a thin and angular face with an imposing nose. Beneath the thin moustache of a Hollywood actor he is sporting an amused smile, which changes his features and gives him a deep expressive wrinkle on his cheek. He is wearing the yellow shirt with a laced-up neck, as was customary at the time. As a defender he was described as ‘raçudo’, a symbol of the ‘garra pacense’, in other words a footballer with plenty of character, one who did not make himself scarce when the game required him to give his all or spit blood. A Gennaro Gattuso, a Pepe, a John Terry or an Eric Cantona, for example. ‘He was a tough guy, hard but correct. Noble, I would say,’ explains José Lopes, his eldest son.
Amaro supported FC Porto, he loved football, had been playing for years, and took the ups and down of Vasquinho’s seasons with a smile. It was a club that, from the very beginning, knew how to maintain good relations with the ‘greats’ of the region, so much so that to the great joy of Amaro and his pacense teammates, Porto and Boavista came to play friendlies at the Campo da Cavada. Later, Panteras (the nickname given to players from the Boavista club) even provided them with a new strip. The first great sporting success came in January 1953: Vasco won away at Amarante, a formidable opponent, and, with a 2–1 victory over Penafiel, clinched the third regional division championship – the fourth level of Portuguese football – although they were not promoted at the end of the season. That would take another four years. On 10 July 1957, after a footballing marathon of four matches in a row with a total of more than six hours of play, Vasquinho fought off Sporting Clube da Cruz and achieved promotion to the second regional division.
When, during the 1962–63 season, the club changed its name to become Futebol Clube de Paços de Ferreira, also changing its colours shortly afterwards (from yellow to blue and white stripes in honour of FC Porto), Amaro Lopes da Cavada was no longer part of the team. Like millions of Portuguese, he had packed his bags and left. With his wife Carolina, one year his junior and originally from the parish of São Pedro da Raimunda, and their three sons, he took the difficult decision to emigrate.
‘My parents arrived in France at Christmas 1957. I was four, Maria was two and Manu was a newborn, he wasn’t even three weeks old,’ recalls José Lopes. ‘We were supposed to go to Cassis, where we had family who could help us, but my father found a job in construction in Mâcon. So, at Christmas, we ended up in the extreme south of Burgundy, 70 kilometres from Lyon. We were the first Portuguese family to arrive in the town. There’s a large community there now, with more than 120 families. Lots of them, very many, came from Paços da Ferreira and landed up there thanks to my parents, who helped members of our family, then our friends to find work and get on their feet. I remember that my mother, who had her hands full with the four of us [my sister Andrée was born a year after we arrived in Mâcon], helped the young people who came on their own, giving them a hand with administrative procedures and, as she didn’t know how to write in French, she would ask me, when I was just ten years old, to fill out forms and requests. Many of those fleeing the Salazar dictatorship came knocking on our door and were welcomed by us until they found a place to live. Our house in Fontenailles, not far from Champlevert, was almost like the centre of the Portuguese community.
‘Although she had to stay at home, my mother helped a great many people. My father worked an enormous amount. He worked hard at the building site and forged a career in construction, but never forgot about football during those first five years. He played at FC Mâcon and Crêches-sur-Saône, a village 8 kilometres from here.’
As incredible as it may sound, it seems the Portuguese defender never took his sons to the stadium. But they went anyway, and a passion for football was handed down. Maybe it is in the family’s DNA. José played for twelve years with ASPTT Mâcon and had a season at La Chapelle-de-Guinchay. Manu, his brother, a false winger on the right, who is said to have been the king of perfect passes and hook turns, played for the Association Mâcon Portugais. ‘He could have been a pro if he’d taken it more seriously,’ says José. ‘One summer, he had a trial in Portugal and they wanted him. But he wasn’t interested in it any more.’
But the Lopes brothers shared this passion for football with a certain Alain Griezmann, whom they met at secondary school in the late 1960s. He was in the same class as Manu Lopes. The two were inseparable and they spent their afternoons on the pitch. They got along wonderfully and despite the years that friendship has not diminished. Alain spent time with the Lopes family and ended up falling in love with Isabelle, the youngest daughter of Amaro and Carolina. He was 29, she was twenty and they started dating. Thanks to football and Sporting’s Sunday matches, they saw each other regularly and were married the following year. Antoine was born on 21 March 1991. Isabelle had Maud three years later, and Théo, the youngest in the family, was born in 1996.
Amaro Lopes da Camada, their maternal grandfather died in 1992. He would never meet Théo. Nor would he see his grandson, Antoine, reach the pinnacle of world football. He would not be able to support his beloved Paços da Ferreira in the Primeira Liga, the top division of the Portuguese championship. But his sons, grandchildren and the Portuguese community of Mâcon still think of him and have not forgotten his great passion for football, which he has handed down to his descendants. Every February, for nineteen years, Sporting Club Mâcon has organised a futsal tournament for its youngest players. It is named after Amaro Lopes.
Chapter 2
The Blue Doors
These two large, well-worn blue doors have nothing particularly unusual about them, except that with a little imagination, they could be mistaken for a football goal. They have now become a place of worship as they still bear the traces of the local boy’s first kicks. It was here that Antoine Griezmann relentlessly tortured the wooden garage door. He would spend hours kicking and kicking to train his left foot. If you look more closely at the old family home, you can imagine the rhythm of his training regime. You can clearly make out the ball marks. There are dozens of them, all different sizes. Footballs of course, but basketballs and tennis balls too.
There is scarcely time to scrutinise the door before a man in his sixties emerges from the Parc des Gautriats, next to the house. He shouts over to us: ‘You’ve come about the Griezmanns, right? I saw the kid training. I’m a neighbour. He would spend hours kicking against that blue door. Rain or shine, often on his own. His mother had to shout at him to stop, she was so fed up with the noise of the ball against the garage. But we’re proud of that door in this part of town. Everyone stops to take pictures of it. We feel a bit like a part of his success. It was here that the legend began.’
Welcome to Mâcon. It was here in this small town in the centre east of France, lulled by the Saône, that Antoine Griezmann grew up. A small provincial town with just over 35,000 inhabitants, wedged between Bresse and Beaujolais, about 60 kilometres from Lyon. An unremarkable town and somewhere not necessarily used to attention.
‘It sometimes feels as if time has stopped here,’ remarks Céline Peuble, a journalist who has worked in the town for ten years. ‘It must be because of the town’s geographical position. Mâcon is almost out on its own. It’s in the extreme south of Burgundy, about 150 kilometres from Dijon, but also about 50 minutes by car from Lyon. It feels a bit torn. It claims a Burgundian wine-making heritage but in other ways wants to be as attractive as Lyon. And that’s a hard comparison to live up to.’
First impressions of the town are indeed contrasting. Straight away, you feel how pleasant life must be as you pass the vineyards that wrap around the city, wander along the banks of the Saône, admire the Saint-Vincent cathedral or cross Place aux Herbes to see the astonishing maison de bois (a medieval timber-frame house at the heart of the city). The narrow cobbled streets of the town centre have plenty of surprises in store for those who have the time to get lost. But, paradoxically, there is also a slightly antiquated feel, a sense of boredom that lingers in the air. As if the town has remained frozen too long, to the point of gathering dust.
Perhaps it is the fault of Alphonse de Lamartine. A 19th-century poet and politician – born in Mâcon in 1790; died in Paris in 1869 – De Lamartine was the town’s main source of pride for more than 150 years. The author of Méditations poétiques, from which the famous poems ‘Le Lac’ (The Lake) and ‘L’Isolement’ (Isolation) are taken, can be found on every street corner. The town centre is named after him: there are the Lamartine Quays, the Lamartine Esplanade, the Lamartine High School, the Lamartine Museum, and his imposing statue has stood outside the town hall since 1878. He is the boss here, so much so that the Mâconnais like to refer to their town as the ‘cité Lamartine’.
Alphonse de Lamartine undoubtedly gave the town its penchant for culture and elegance. Mâcon has a national theatre, a symphonic orchestra that plays regularly in the Saint-Vincent Cathedral, and its own society for the arts, sciences and literature, founded in 1805. Mâcon, like all good provincial towns, is also a subscriber to the rewards of being a ‘ville fleurie’, a town in bloom, and was awarded its second Fleur d’Or in 2016.
Would it be fair to say that Mâcon thinks of itself as a little bourgeois? Or rather ‘faux-bourgeois’ in the words of a supervisor from a local sports club: ‘It’s an administrative town with plenty of officials. A town where nothing much happens.’
From a sporting perspective, this does seem to be the case. The most recent popular event of any size dates back to 2006, when the Tour de France passed through the town. When it comes to medal tables, there are not many champions to speak of. There was a basketball player, Alain Digbeu – trained at ASVEL in the late 1990s – who went on to do well with FC Barcelona and Real Madrid’s basketball teams. But apart from 92 games for the French basketball team, this does not amount to much. There have also been a few footballers with modest careers: Frédéric Jay and Antonio Gomez, who both played for Auxerre, the goalkeeper Jean-Philippe Forêt (Montceau and Olympique Lyonnais) and the striker Roland Vieira, a French international in every junior category but eventually blocked from progressing at Olympique Lyonnais (OL) in the early 2000s by Sidney Govou.
‘This isn’t a sporting town,’ confirms Bernard Pichegru, editor at Le Journal de Saône et Loire. ‘There is no mass sports policy. No club has ever managed to play its cards right. Rugby is vegetating and football has never been a priority. At one time, there was talk of one big south Burgundy club that would bring together the towns of Mâcon, Gueugnon, Louhans and Montceau, but the idea was quickly abandoned.’ Mâcon would never be all that keen on football, but it is a town by the water, facing the peaceful banks of the Saône, where its inhabitants meet in the summer to attend various competitions organised by rowing and speedboat racing clubs.
Antoine Griezmann grew up in the north of the town, just under two kilometres from the historic centre as the crow flies, in a working-class neighbourhood called Les Gautriats. There are several housing estates around the town centre. To the south lies La Chanaye, a tower block area where Antoine’s maternal grandmother lived, and to the north, several neighbourhoods classed as priorities for development, such as Les Saugeraies and Marbé.
The neighbourhood in which this future star of French football was born dates from the 1960s. About twenty buildings stand on a hill that overlooks the most residential areas. At first glance, the neighbourhood does not seem particularly unpleasant. You might even say it was somewhat welcoming. It is a long way from the large housing estates that have sprung up across French cities. In Les Gautriats the pastel-coloured buildings are no taller than five storeys. They are bordered by large pine trees and wide-open green spaces where you can imagine impromptu football games blossoming in the spring. The sound of children laughing and shouting is never far away. The schools are located in the middle of the neighbourhood, on Rue de Normandie. ‘Le Petit Prince’ Nursery School is a long, one-storey building with red barriers and some playground equipment. About 50 metres on the right is the Georges Brassens Primary School and its spiral staircase. This rectangular building is much more imposing and extends over two floors. It is surrounded by a huge tarmac playground, with faint markings for a football pitch and handball court. There is also a basketball hoop. ‘Antoine was at primary school here,’ remembers Catherine Guérin, a teacher who taught in Les Gautriats in the late 90s. ‘There was a real social mix at that time. The school had about 170 pupils in six classes, but I remember Antoine well. My husband taught him at the Mâcon club. He was a very nice kid who was only interested in football.’ At school, as he himself admits, he was always at the back of the class, usually chatting: ‘I was the kind of kid who would cut bits off my rubber to throw at my friends, and whenever my mother asked if I had any homework, funnily enough I never did!’ Unsurprisingly, his best marks came in physical education: he excelled in basketball and swimming in particular.
Antoine did not go unnoticed with his blond hair and a football stuck permanently to his left foot. ‘As soon as he started walking he had a ball at his feet. He spent his free time doing keepie uppies,’ remembers Christophe Grosjean, a friend of the family and one of his first coaches. For Antoine it was all about playing. ‘He was always asking what time it was so he knew when the bell would ring. He was only interested in waiting for break time so he could go outside and play football,’ remembers his childhood friend, Jean-Baptiste Michaud.
At school, Antoine was one of the ringleaders who would make up teams at break time and would even sing the national anthem before starting their game: ‘He was a simple, likeable kid who never caused any trouble,’ remembers his former headmaster, Marc Cornaton. ‘He was one of a group of boys and girls who played football at every break time without fail. After school, it was football again. I had a prime view because I lived next to the football pitch where the kids would meet up. Sometimes it was pretty annoying, I admit!’
As soon as the bell rang, Antoine would dash home, always with his ball at his feet or under his arm. Since the early 1980s, his parents had lived next to the Les Gautriats community centre. It was one of the few houses in the neighbourhood, a small detached home at number 36, where Rue d’Auvergne and Rue de Normandie meet. The two-storey house was rented by the council because Antoine’s father, Alain Griezmann, had been a municipal employee of the town of Mâcon for a number of years, as well as the caretaker at the community centre. After school, Antoine never wasted time doing his homework. ‘I would throw down my backpack wherever it fell and go out to play with my friends or dash to training. I don’t have any memories that don’t involve a ball. Even when we went to visit my parents’ friends I had to take my ball with me. Above all, football was fun, a real passion. When you’re ten years old, being a professional is just a dream, nothing more.’
One story in particular did the rounds at Les Gautriats School. One morning, Antoine’s mother, who was a cleaner at the Mâcon hospital, asked him before he left: ‘Antoine, are you sure you haven’t forgotten anything?’
‘No, I don’t think so, I’ve got my ball.’
‘I know, but what about your school bag. You might find that more useful for school!’
Antoine could think about nothing but football and his pitches were all over the town, at the foot of the tower blocks at La Chanaye, near his grandmother’s house: ‘People in this part of town remember Antoine as a little blond kid who wore French national team shorts,’ recalls André de Sousa, another childhood friend. ‘When we were three or four, his parents would take him to visit his grandmother, who lived on the floor below us, and we would take the opportunity to have a kick about. Well, I say ‘take the opportunity’; he would force me to play with him!’
Antoine also had his routine at Les Gautriats: the famous blue doors of the family garage, as well as a basketball court below the house, where his father had improvised some wooden goals under the panels. He spent hours here with his friends, brother and sister. He often played on his own as well. But he always had his ball with him.
Chapter 3
The Nedved Lookalike
It has been pandemonium for several days. Antoine has returned to the fold. It’s been two years since he last appeared in public in Mâcon. On Sunday 21 June 2015, the small UF Mâconnais club is turned upside down. The child prodigy has not forgotten his first club, where he holds the ‘Griezmann Challenge’, now in its third year. Played over two days, it brings together 800 children from clubs across the region. Saturday is dedicated to the Under-9 and Under-13 categories, but on the Sunday this year it is the turn of the Under-11s to show what they are made of.
Antoine finally appears in the middle of the afternoon. He is the centre of attention in his tie-dyed yellow, green, blue and pink t-shirt. His hair is slicked back and his thin moustache makes an impression, as always. Like a boxer getting ready to enter the ring, he is surrounded by an impressive security cordon. Antoine is also being closely marked by a team from France Télévisions, charged, despite the chaos, with recording his every thought: ‘I’m very fond of my town. Every time I come back here it has an effect on me. It feels good to be with family’, the Atlético Madrid player says into the microphone thrust towards him as he tries to make his way among the crowd of fans who have come to welcome him.
All the members of the Griezmann clan are present, by his side as always: his father, Alain is in the front row. His mother, Isabelle, with short, washed-out blonde hair, and his sister Maud, a petite brunette with tattoos on her forearm, are busying themselves behind the scenes to try to manage the 40 volunteers assembled for the event. His younger brother Théo makes himself more discreet. His uncles, cousins and friends have all come to lend a hand and proudly wear their black t-shirts with the word ‘Staff’ printed on the back.
It is a return of great pomp and circumstance, the return of a star. Antoine poses for photo after photo, signs countless autographs and receives countless hugs. Isabelle, his mother, struggles to hold back her emotions: ‘I’m very proud because I often think about what he’s been through’. Everyone at the club remembers the chaotic journey he has been on. You only have to open the door of the UF Mâconnais clubhouse to discover an entire wall dedicated to the French national team striker. It is a shrine to him. Of course, there are framed and signed shirts from Real Sociedad and Atlético Madrid, but also a whole series of photos that retrace his earliest days at the club. Pictures that Josette Mongeay, UFM’s loyal secretary, likes to talk about: ‘That’s at a tournament, when he was in the débutants [the Under-7s]’, pointing a finger at the young Antoine, in the centre of the photo wearing a blue shirt at a prize-giving. She continues, pointing at the display of photos on the left of the wall. Here we see Antoine lying on a football pitch with nine of his teammates. He is jostling to get his little blond head into the middle of the crowd to show his cheeky face.
These snapshots date from the 1997–98 season. At six years old, Antoine had just officially received his first French Football Federation licence, although he had not yet reached the required age to make his club debut in an Entente Charnay-Mâcon 71 shirt.
‘We started him at five and a half’, confirms his first coach Bruno Chetoux. His father trained a team at the club and Antoine was always hanging around the pitches with his ball. To start with, we would only let him train because he was still too young to take part in Saturday matches. But eventually we had him play a few matches before he turned six.’ Antoine would come every Wednesday from 2pm to 3.30pm with a group of about twenty débutants. The Mommessin ground at Charnay-lès-Mâcon, which has since been demolished and replaced by housing and shops, was just a few minutes by car from Les Gautriats. Unsurprisingly, Antoine took to it like a duck to water and attended every session without fail. ‘What was most striking was his love of the game,’ explains David Guérin, the other coach in charge of the category, whose coaching career was still in its infancy. ‘Whenever we started an activity, he was there. He was so happy to be on the pitch. Football was already his life.’
Bruno Chetoux was a more experienced instructor but was still impressed by his young recruit: ‘We could see straight away that he was a good player,’ he explains. ‘But the most surprising thing was that at that age gifted children tend to be more selfish with their play. Not him, he was already thinking about the team. Of course, he liked to score goals, but he was also happy to help others score.’ This attitude quickly made him popular with his new teammates. Martin Voir, one of his most loyal friends and earliest teammates, remembers: ‘It’s true that he was already capable of dribbling past the entire opposing team. We relied on him. But at the same time he was always very generous and never pushed himself forward.’
Antoine was soon playing above his age category. He joined the group born a year earlier, in 1990. With this team, which had already forged a reputation on the pitches of Saône-et-Loire, he quickly found his feet and showed himself to have the mindset of a true champion: ‘We didn’t lose many matches, hardly ever,’ says Bruno Chetoux. ‘When it did happen, it was a big deal. I remember an indoor tournament in Mâcon that we lost on penalties. Antoine missed his last attempt. He left in tears, without even waiting for the prize-giving. That showed me his temperament. Even at that age he was already a winner. He was determined.’
Because the team was performing so well, the two coaches decided to play further afield during the second year. ‘We travelled to compete in more important regional tournaments,’ recalls David Guérin. ‘The 1991 generation was fantastic, with great players such as Jean-Baptiste Michaud.’ But in this team, the leader was clearly Antoine. ‘Our little star, even if I don’t like this word very much and it doesn’t correspond at all to his character or behaviour. He was reserved and very sensitive,’ explains Chetoux. ‘But on the pitch he was the only one you noticed. Even the parents of the opposing team fell in love with the little blond kid.’ David Guérin confirms: ‘He would also get noticed because he was small, which at first glance could have been a handicap, but as soon as he had the ball at his feet, the spectators’ faces would light up. He was clearly the leader of his generation. He scored goal upon goal at tournaments in Sancé and Mâcon. When we had Antoine in the team, we knew we would go a long way in the tournament. But to think that he would have the career he has had? That was something else.’
In 1999, when Antoine was getting ready to join the Under-11 poussin category, the local footballing landscape was turned on its head. There was a merger between Mâcon’s three footballing entities: ASPTT Mâcon, a club known for its training, FC Mâcon, the town’s historic club, and Antoine’s club, Entente Charnay-Mâcon 71, which had the advantage at the time of moving up to France’s fifth division. This initiative would see the birth of a new club, the Union du Football Mâconnais (UFM). Although the plan had not been unanimously received by the clubs, as its motivation was primarily political, it would clearly benefit several generations of players, including that of Antoine Griezmann. ‘Having a single club logically allowed us to increase the number of our youth teams,’ explains Serge Rivera, President of UFM for six years from 2004 to 2010. ‘At that time, we even gained players from neighbouring départements. That gave us ultra-competitive groups, particularly for the famous generations born in 1990 and 1991.’
It was during this period that a core of players formed around Antoine. In the team coached by Jérôme Millet, Grizi was living his passion for football to the full with his friends Jean-Baptiste Michaud, Julian De Cata, Stéphane Rivera and Martin Voir. ‘There were ten or twelve of us kids always with a ball,’ Voir remembers. ‘And when we weren’t training or playing matches, we were at our parents’ matches. We didn’t watch at all, we would find a corner of the stadium and make goals out of bibs or shoes.’
Antoine did not stay in the Under-11s for long. Just as he had in the Under-7s, he was quickly moved up a category and joined the Under-13 group trained by Christophe Grosjean for the 2000–01 season. ‘He was bored with the poussins so during the second half of the season, he began to come with us now and again. He got a taste for it. Then, when we didn’t take him, he wasn’t happy. I tried to explain to him that he was still young, but he kept sulking. To be frank, he was already better than most of them technically because he already had great ball control. Keepie uppies were too easy for him. Antoine was always the best: 50 with his left foot, 50 with his right and twenty with his head.’
Christophe Grosjean would follow his development for several seasons. In particular, the two years he spent with the benjamins, or Under-13s, from 2001 to 2003: ‘That first year, he didn’t really manage to hold his own because physique counts for a lot, and at that age he wasn’t ready in that respect. But by the second year, he had begun to get bigger physically and better technically. We were still playing in teams of nine and I liked to put him on one side in the centre left position.’
Those two seasons with the Under-13s were marked by the famous Coupe Nationale, the grand final of which brought together the best clubs in France at the Cap Breton complex in Landes every June. Each time, Antoine would miss out on qualifying for this important national event in his category.
The first year, during the 2001–02 season, his team lost in the regional Burgundy final in Beaune against a small village club, to everyone’s surprise. It was a great opportunity missed for the generation that had experienced plenty of success throughout the season and won a number of prestigious tournaments such as at Cavaillon in the Var. The following year they failed again in the Coupe Nationale, though Antoine consoled himself by scoring a stunning acrobatic bicycle kick.
He was more comfortable than ever at UFM. Football was the centre of his world. At that time, Antoine spent almost every waking moment with his two best friends, Stéphane Rivera and Jean-Baptiste Michaud. The small group ran riot on almost all the pitches in the surrounding area, particularly at Massonne in Charnay-lès-Mâcon. ‘We would play there during the holidays and on Wednesday afternoons. We wouldn’t think twice about moving the goals to where the grass was better and, once, because the goals were chained down, we had to break the chain with a hammer,’ one of them admitted. Antoine, Stéphane and JB, often flanked by other friends from the team such as Julian De Cata and Jérôme Belleville, had no trouble rounding up local kids to make up teams for breakneck matches. They could spend hours on this small pitch overlooking the vines, playing out film-like scenarios: ‘We imagined we were playing in the World Cup or the Champions League. Everyone had their team and we had to do it over and over again as many times as we could. When we scored, we would try to celebrate our goals in the most original way possible. It was 2002, so we tried to copy the Senegalese dance. Antoine was fond of sliding like Thierry Henry or Fernando Torres,’ recalls Jean-Baptiste Michaud. ‘It’s true, for us that was very important,’ continues Stéphane Rivera. ‘And sometimes, we would have goal celebration competitions on the streets of Mâcon. The aim of the game was to slide on your knees and set off the automatic sprinklers on the lawns.’
Of course, their parents were not necessarily always aware of what their children were getting up to. But the families were close and would get together regularly: ‘We knew each other well because the dads were also involved with football in Mâcon,’ continues the former president, Serge Rivera. ‘Back then, lots of them, including Antoine’s father, would come to the club to train. There was a great atmosphere. We would all go off together to tournaments and the kids were always holed up at each other’s houses. Antoine spent several days at our house, jumping in the pool. He had a great imagination and was a bit of a comedian. He was a really kind and funny kid who called my wife his ‘grande maman’.
It was often chaotic in the most modest home in Les Gautriats: like whenever Antoine pretended to be Pavel Nedvěd (the Czech midfielder who won the Ballon d’Or in 2003) in the long corridor he used as a football pitch, or when he was in his room swapping Panini stickers with his friends or playing on his console. His walls were covered with posters. ‘He loved Nedvěd so much he copied his hairstyle. He adored Zidane too but it was David Beckham who was really his idol. He loved his touch with a football, but especially his elegance both on and off the pitch. He had his Manchester United shirt. That’s why he now plays in long sleeves and likes to wear the number 7’, confirms Stéphane Rivera. There are still some photos lying around in his room. In one of them, you can see him smiling as he sits in the Stade Vélodrome wearing the yellow and blue shirt of Olympique Marseille: ‘To start with, he liked Marseille, like me,’ continues Jean-Baptiste Michaud. ‘But because he went to the Stade de Gerland with his father, he began supporting Olympique Lyonnais.’
At that time, the nearby club became a real force in French football by winning its first French league title in 2002. Antoine’s father, a long-standing supporter of AS Saint-Étienne, had contacts at the club. He knew one of OL’s physios, Patrick Perret, who allowed Antoine to meet his childhood hero Sonny Anderson during one of the team’s country retreats at the Château de Pizay in Saint-Jean-D’Ardières. The picture had pride of place in Antoine’s bedroom for a long time. In the photo, apparently taken in haste, he is wearing an OL tracksuit, arm in arm with the Brazilian striker in a slightly old-fashioned room. ‘He was proud of that photo,’ confirm his friends. ‘Ten years later, when he bumped into Sonny Anderson, who has since become a consultant in football, at a Champions League match, he sent us a text straight afterwards saying, ‘Hey guys, I was with Sonny Anderson!’’
From time to time, Isabelle Griezmann had to raise her voice to quieten down the group of children overexcited by their PlayStation. But she had already come to terms with it. She had understood her eldest son only had one thing in his head: to live out his passion one day. A few years later, his brother Théo found some drawings in which his older brother had drawn himself giving an interview to journalists from Canal+. His mother also found some school work he had written in Year 7, in which he wrote that he was going to be a professional footballer when he grew up. Rumour has it that back then Antoine even got himself caught playing football in the school toilets long after the bell had rung.
Chapter 4
Too Small
He had his own special way of leading training sessions, of projecting his croaky voice to the four corners of the pitch at the broad Champlevert sports complex in Mâcon. He called his players ‘les petits’ and he wouldn’t hesitate to make them take their shoes off at the end of the session to play barefoot. ‘It’s about feeling the leather better,’ he would say. Jean Belver died in October 2016 at the age of 95. His name would go down in footballing legend in Mâcon and he left his mark on a great many generations of footballers, including that of Antoine Griezmann.
For his players, Jean Belver was someone to look up to. He was a former professional. Before settling in Mâcon in the early 1960s, he had forged a successful career from 1942 to 1955 with Lyon Olympique Universitaire, Stade de Reims, OGC Nice, Olympique de Marseille, Olympique Lyonnais and FC Grenoble. His record of achievements included two French league titles and a national cup won in the 1950s with Nice. But his main source of pride was his one and only selection to play in a France national team shirt during a match against Belgium at the famous Heysel stadium in 1950.
In addition to his playing career, Belver later spent many years working as a coach at clubs in Saône-et-Loire. He was described as an educator, a peerless instructor and a leader of men. Over the years, as he gained in experience, he became the ‘wizard’ of Mâconnais football.
By September 2003, when he was getting ready to start with the generations born in 1990 and 1991, he was already an old man of 72. ‘He had coached their fathers when he trained the senior team in the 1980s. He had become their mentor, and he had already got some of them to come back to UFM as instructors. He was now in charge of their children,’ remembers a former club director.
For the 2003–04 season, Jean Belver was supported by his spiritual son Thierry Comas, who had agreed to be his right-hand man. ‘I came because of our friendship and I didn’t regret it. We had an outstanding season and finished the Burgundy championship unbeaten and with only two draws to our name. We even managed to beat AJ Auxerre twice and that was no mean feat.’
Their performance was rightly celebrated by the regional press. Le Journal de Saône-et-Loire
