Qatar 2022: Tchouameni, another example of France unearthing technically accomplished gifted young footballers

It has been enlightening to watch the progress of Aurélien Tchouaméni through the World Cup. Tchouaméni, 22, has started all six France games, played every minute of four and was substituted in games already won (Australia and Poland).

The defensive midfielder also scored an important goal against England and has played with an authority at odds with his age.

What is it about France and its penchant for unearthing technically accomplished and athletically gifted young footballers? Clairefontaine, the 140-acre national football academy set in the Rambouillet forest 40 miles southwest of Paris, is offered as a one-word explanation.

It was opened in 1988 and a decade later France won their first World Cup. Four years ago they got their second.

Thirty-five minutes into the semi-final against Morocco, Tchouaméni drove forward from midfield, his long stride eating up the ground. Timing his pass with precision, he slid the ball inside the Morocco centre back Achraf Dari for Kylian Mbappé.

Pressed by the defender, Mbappé’s attempted finish was hooked clear by Jawad El Yamiq.

The ball looped out of the danger area towards Tchouaméni, whose first touch was a softly weighted volleyed pass to Olivier Giroud, giving the centre forward a straightforward opportunity. Giroud bent his left-footed shot wide of the unguarded goal. Tchouaméni’s passes were worthy of two goals, not one.

Later in the game he started the move that led to the team’s clinching second goal.

Before the World Cup, he had played 12 games for France. At this tournament, he’s been pivotal to the way the team have played. The key to that pass to Giroud was the midfielder knowing what to do before the ball reached him. According to Robert Moreno, his coach at Monaco from 2020 until his departure to Real Madrid in the summer, Tchouaméni once lacked this peripheral vision.

In training at Monaco, Cesc Fàbregas dispossessed him, creeping up on his blind side and nicking the ball. “Aurélien did not have the capacity to position his body so he did not lose the ball,” Moreno said. “His peripheral vision was not good. We started working on that. You need to look around before receiving, not when you receive the ball. There are examples like Xavi and [Sergio] Busquets. If you count how many times they looked around during a match, it was incredible, 300 to 400. People say Xavi and Busquets always made the right decision. It is because they knew what was around them.”

It is thought that coaches love coaching but this isn’t strictly true. They enjoy working with players who are coachable; the others can be hard work. Tchouaméni is a coach’s dream.

He understands the game and is a quick learner. After Wednesday’s semi-final he spoke to journalists in English, a language he’d studied while at Bordeaux and then Monaco because he’d wanted to play in the Premier League.

The only thing that could have taken him away from that career path was Real Madrid.

They came in with an offer of €80 million (£69.7 million). As soon as he got to the Bernabéu, he was in the starting XI.

He is also the reason the club were prepared to let Casemiro join Manchester United.

It is convenient, of course, to explain France’s latter-day eminence strictly in terms of the system, to see Clairefontaine not as a factory but as the most advanced football laboratory. There, they tweak the models, like engineers at the Mercedes headquarters in Stuttgart. Each model better than the one that preceded it.

In 2018, France won the World Cup, with Paul Pogba making an important contribution to the team effort. Since then, Pogba’s career has stagnated. Lots of injury and some attitudinal problems. Back at the laboratory they came up with an improved version of the same player; one with Pogba’s physical prowess, athleticism and technical ability but also a better mentality. This new player is Aurélien Tchouaméni.

As alluring as the narrative is, it is also nonsense. What France is producing cannot be explained by the impressive 17th-century chateau with its pristine training pitches set in the Rambouillet forest. How could it?

It wasn’t one of the sports scientists at Clairefontaine who advised the 19-year-old Tchouaméni to hire his own personal trainer when he’d just broken into the first team at Bordeaux.

That was the kid’s own decision. Monaco discovered this and it played into their decision to pay what Bordeaux were asking. Mbappé did spend time at Clairefontaine but could the various coaches there have had anything like the influence that his dad, Wilfried, had?

Wilfried was born in Cameroon and emigrated to France. He was his son’s first coach and has been his coach ever since and is now his agent too. Other parents took their kids to the cinema or on sun holidays, Wilfried and Fayza Lamari took their five-year-old to meet Thierry Henry and Zinédine Zidane.

What to say about Antoine Griezmann? He never got near Clairefontaine or any academy in France. “I was 14 when I arrived at Real Sociedad [in San Sebastian, northern Spain]. No team wanted me in France, I trialled for around eight clubs and then Real came,” he has said. From the age of 14, he’s never lived in France.

This is about something greater than the national academy. It relates to France as a country that offers young people excellent sports facilities and good coaching from a young age. Brazil, with a much bigger population, 214 million to France’s 67.5 million, is the only country in the world that produces more professional footballers.

For Wednesday’s semi-final, France had to play without their first-choice centre back, Dayot Upamecano, and the midfielder Adrien Rabiot. They turned to two 23-year-olds, Ibrahima Konaté and Youssouf Fofana. Konaté and Fofana performed well, reflecting the depth of talent in the squad.

This is not surprising. At the last count, 34 French players were registered in the Premier League, 20 in La Liga, 37 in Serie A and 40 in the Bundesliga. Of the 40 in the German league, five are at Bayern Munich. No other European country has anything like this dispersal of talent. Eduardo Camavinga, the exciting Real Madrid midfielder, 20, is in the France squad but not the starting team.

The French story is also better understood by considering the ethnicity of their squad. After the Second World War, France imported many workers from its colonies. They came for labour and made France their home. According to a 2014 census, the number of immigrants is six million, 9 per cent of the population. When France won in Russia four years ago, 87 per cent of their squad were from families of immigrants. Of the 26-man squad in Qatar, 92 per cent come from immigrants. William Saliba’s mum, like Mbappé’s dad, is Cameroonian. Camavinga was born to Congolese parents in a refugee camp in Angola.

Other countries listed in the players’ biographies are Algeria, Benin, Germany, Guadeloupe, Guinea-Bissau, Mali, Martinique, Morocco, Senegal and Spain. Hugo Lloris provides the Spanish connection as his dad, a Spanish banker, moved to Monaco.

We have watched with admiration as this ethnically diverse and wonderfully talented group progress through the competition. Tchouaméni is a good example of the squad’s quality. At only 22, the responsibilities of playing in the pivotal defensive midfield role have rested easily on his shoulders.

Against Morocco he closed off the channels that the opposition sought to play through. He funnelled left, then right, forever moving, always affecting the play. When little skirmishes happened after an overly aggressive challenge, he was the peacemaker. Like an old hand. If a team-mate chased back, he encouraged by clapping his hands.

Someone asked Didier Deschamps afterwards about his two young and relatively inexperienced midfielders, Fofana and Tchouaméni. “Well experience isn’t everything,” the head coach said. “They have good qualities and play in top clubs. They are good enough to play at this level. Fofana didn’t show enough strength against Tunisia but he showed tonight he learnt from that experience.

“Tchouaméni is different. He played for us when he was very young, went to Real Madrid and slotted straight in. He has all the strengths that you need at this level and there are only slight adjustments that he needs.”

At the end of the game Tchouaméni, the son of a Cameroonian pharmacist, stood alone as his team-mates rushed to celebrate. He sympathised with a nearby Moroccan player and was then embraced by Deschamps, who wrapped his arms around him for what seemed like an age. It gave you some idea of how Tchouaméni has performed in this tournament.-THE TIMES