We have the best young players in the country confronting each other every weekend.
There are more registered football players in and around Paris than in the whole of Belgium.
This should come as no surprise. In the end, the population of the Île-de-France region (of over 12 million inhabitants) is indeed also bigger than the population of Belgium (of 11.4 million).
However, while Île-de-France makes up around 18% of the population of the country, its footballers, i.e. those born and/or raised in and around Paris, represent a significantly higher percentage of professional French football players.
The numbers are staggering.
And they seem to keep on rising.
According to economist Bastien Drut, back in the 1995/96 season only 10% of all French players to feature in Ligue 1 were born in the Île-de-France.
Eighteen years later, in the 2013/14 season, the figure grew to 27%.
This season (2019/20) every single Ligue 1 club has at least one player on their first-team squad who was born in the Paris region and then began his career at one of many local football clubs of the French capital. Only Metz and Montpellier do not feature one aged under-23.
What is more, last season (2018/19) as many as 158 Franciliens featured in the big five European leagues, making up 6% of all players.
In fact, the manager of the famous INF Clairefontaine Academy, Jean-Claude Lafargue, estimates that between 60% and 70% of professional French footballers currently come from the Paris region.
The France national team 2018 World Cup-winning squad featured eight Franciliens (35%), in comparison to just three (14%) back in 1998 and solely one (5%) for the 1984 European Championships triumph.
THE POWER OF THE SUBURBS
But what is it that makes the Île-de-France region – and its footballers – such a powerhouse of European football?
(One that Arsène Wenger once labelled as the world’s second-best talent pool.)
Unsurprisingly, one would argue, the suburbs of Paris stand out.
“It is a big pond“, says A.A.S. Sarcelles coach Mohamed Coulibaly with respect to the sheer number of talents on show in Paris’ 20 arrondissements.
“The quality of the ‘reservoir’ is born quite simply from the extreme density of the working-class areas“, believes Matthieu Bideau, head of recruitment of the FC Nantes Academy.
“The average level is higher in Île-de-France”, constitutes Jamel Sandjak, the chairman of regional league competitions.
“We have the best young players in the country confronting each other every weekend”, adds Coulibaly. “That is what makes the difference.”
There are other, perhaps somewhat obvious reasons, too.
“Youngsters are more motivated [here] to become professional footballers than elsewhere”, Sandjak points out.
“Because there is only football“, Paul Pogba told Simon Kuper a few years ago. “Whether it’s at school or outside in the neighbourhood, everyone will play football. And that helps people not to stay in the neighbourhood doing nothing and doing stupid things. Every day it’s the ball. That’s all there is.”
“But the real wealth of the Île-de-France region comes from children stemming from the African immigration“, says Bideau. “It is them who make up a significant part of the elite.”
Other factors may be less evident, though.
Kuper, who lives in Paris and claimed to spend lots of weekend mornings watching his children play football in the French capital, brings into focus the perhaps surprisingly high standard of sports infrastructure even in seemingly the poorest of suburbs.
Among old, dingy apartment blocks sit new-generation, state-funded artificial pitches. And neatly kept too, as Kuper points out.
“In Île-de-France, we have a lot of very good ‘educators’ as well as lots of synthetic pitches of the last generation”, adds Gilles Bibé, manager of AC Boulogne-Billancourt, one of the biggest clubs in the region.
And then there is potentially the biggest difference-maker nowadays.
Scouting.
Apparently, you will not encounter more football scouts anywhere else on the globe with the sole exception of São Paulo.
And not just domestic scouts either.
“We make them sign at a younger age now [from 11-12],” admits Nantes’ Bideau, situated nearly 400 kilometres west from Paris. “There is so much competition that if we don’t make them sign, someone else will take them.”
“The local clubs are at war with one another to get the best players as young as possible. The English clubs are sharks. The French teams are sheep. The amateur clubs are sardines.”
What do foreign scouts like most in French footballers?
“All the players who we recruited from France bring in a good mix of physical power, pace, explosiveness, but also good technical skills”, revealed the then RB Leipzig head coach, Ralf Rangnick. “They control the ball well because they learned to play and strike the ball in the street. We look for players who have that street football culture, with good technical skills and tactical education”.
“The winning team stays on the pitch”, describes Lionel Amegnizin, sporting adviser and expert on the Paris region. “So if you want to stay and play longer, you have to give everything you have.
“There is a difference of three, four, sometimes five years [between players]. The small one, when playing against somebody bigger and stronger, has to show his imagination and creativity to get out of the situation. Finally, in the suburbs, it is about your own identity, you have to establish yourself and win respect”.
THE BEDROCK
“There exists several places in the world that are the blessed lands of football: Brasil and France, and more particularly Seine-Saint-Denis”, these really are the words of nobody other than Bayern Munich’s Karl-Heinz Rummenigge.
If Île-de-France is the powerhouse of European football, Seine-Saint-Denis could be deemed its bedrock.
This département of Greater Paris, located north-east from the centre of the French capital, has not only – and not coincidentally – been associated with the Stade de France football stadium since 1997.
This is also where Thierry Tusseau (the only French 1984 European Champion from Paris) was born.
This is where nine of the 10 (90%) Île-de-France-born Ligue 1 players back from the 1995/96 season are originally from.
(And 19 from the 2013/14 campaign.)
This, finally, is where Kylian Mbappé was born…
… which brings us to Association Sportive de Bondy.
HONING AND DIRECTING
“We are lucky to have players who progress to professional academies every year”, says coach Antonio Riccardi.
And a lot of them.
Take not just Mbappé, but also his ex-teammate Jonathan Ikoné (now at Lille) as well as perhaps the next best thing in French football – defender William Saliba (currently on loan at Saint-Étienne from Arsenal whom he will join in the summer).
All three were born in the town of Bondy.
All three began playing football at the local football club.
All three spent at least six years at AS Bondy before moving to professional academies as teenagers.
Mbappé and Ikoné, who made his debut for the French senior national team last year, were both born in 1998 and were first coached – among others – by Kylian’s father, Wilfried.
“I remember one thing that I will never forget”, Ikoné has recently revealed in a video call to his former coach. “When you asked me to beat a player and I did not do it, you would bring me off the pitch! Thanks to this, I never refuse a one-v-one”.
Some sources claim that, as a child, Ikoné was an even better player than Mbappé. This was, at least in part, down to his dominant physique over his December-born teammate.
However, Mbappé seemed special, too.
Riccardi recalls ‘a boy who did everything better, faster, more often than his peers‘.
And one who loved to dribble and beat his opponents.
“I never told him to stop“, Riccardi said. “He was the best at that. Why would I have told him to stop? He was the best kid I coached. He is probably the best I will ever coach.”
Sébastien Corchia (currently on loan at Espanyol Barcelona from Sevilla) is another well-known former AS Bondy player.
The club – a big pond in Seine-Saint-Denis, which itself is, of course, a big pond in Greater Paris and Île-de-France – say there are about 30 players who, having trained at Bondy, have since turned into professionals.
It is difficult to pinpoint any potential secret of this seemingly typical local football club, based in the suburbs of one of the biggest metropolis on the globe.
Perhaps interestingly, Riccardi does not intend to make it easy for any of the current crop of potential stars of the future to come from Bondy.
One day, he made them train ‘on an uneven dirt field’ rather than ‘their’ artificial turf.
“This is where it is the hardest to play,” he explained. “So this is where they learn the most.”
The experienced coach also says players from the suburbs of Paris tend to ‘respond better to the stick than the carrot‘.
But above all, he ‘does not believe his job is to teach talent‘.
Much rather, it is about ‘honing‘ and ‘directing‘ it.
And, crucially, instill ‘values’ all these young people ‘will need whether they make it or not: “Punctuality. Manners. Fair play. Authority. Respect for the jersey.”’
In the end, this huge talent pond is always going to produce the next generation of professional footballers.
In the picture: Kylian Mbappé greeting newcomers arriving in Bondy, ‘the town of “what is possible”‘ (found here)
BREAKTHROUGH 