Cyril Collot - Griezmann: The Making of Frances Mini Maestro

GRIEZMANN

Luca Caioli is the bestselling author of Messi, Ronaldo and Neymar. A renowned Italian sports journalist, he lives in Spain.

Cyril Collot is a French journalist. He is the author of several books about the French national football team and Olympique Lyonnais. Nowadays he works for the OLTV channel, where he has directed several documentaries about football.

2018 Edition

LUCA CAIOLI
&
CYRIL COLLOT

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 boys 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: Youve come about the Griezmanns, right? I saw the kid training. Im 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 were 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 Mcon. It was here in this small town in the centre east of France, lulled by the Sane, 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 Cline Peuble, a journalist who has worked in the town for ten years. It must be because of the towns geographical position. Mcon is almost out on its own. Its 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 thats 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 Sane, 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 Mcon in 1790; died in Paris in 1869 De Lamartine was the towns main source of pride for more than 150 years. The author of Mditations potiques, from which the famous poems Le Lac (The Lake) and LIsolement (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 Mconnais like to refer to their town as the cit Lamartine.

Alphonse de Lamartine undoubtedly gave the town its penchant for culture and elegance. Mcon 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. Mcon, 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 dOr in 2016.

Would it be fair to say that Mcon thinks of itself as a little bourgeois? Or rather faux-bourgeois in the words of a supervisor from a local sports club: Its 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 Madrids 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: Frdric Jay and Antonio Gomez, who both played for Auxerre, the goalkeeper Jean-Philippe Fort (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 isnt a sporting town, confirms Bernard Pichegru, editor at Le Journal de Sane 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 Mcon, Gueugnon, Louhans and Montceau, but the idea was quickly abandoned. Mcon would never be all that keen on football, but it is a town by the water, facing the peaceful banks of the Sane, 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 Antoines maternal grandmother lived, and to the north, several neighbourhoods classed as priorities for development, such as Les Saugeraies and Marb.

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 pastelcoloured 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 Gurin, 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 Mcon 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.