Riyad Mahrez

[pete 2,499]

Riyad Mahrez was told he was too slow, too small, too frail to make it... now he stands on the brink of winning the Premier League and being named player of the year

 

Riyad Mahrez was ignored as a teenager growing up in France

The Leicester playmaker could not even make the first team of the Sarcelles youth sides where he was playing at a young age

Despite finding things difficult, he always believed he would make it

Mahrez finally got a professional trial when he was 18

He was signed by Leicester from Le Havre, playing in the second tier

On Sunday night he is expected to be named player of the year

 

By Rob Draper for The Mail on Sunday

 

Every year they would go to the football club at Sarcelles in north-east Paris and take the players away. Every year the same.

 

The scouts would turn up from the professional teams, from Bordeaux, Toulouse, from Paris St-Germain, and the best boys, the ones destined for a professional career, would be taken off to their academies.

 

The scouts knew that at Sarcelles, where the Fifties housing blocks stretch endlessly into the Parisian urban sprawl, there was a rich seam of players.

Riyad Mahrez is likely to be named as the Premier League's player of the year on Sunday night

 

Riyad Mahrez is likely to be named as the Premier League's player of the year on Sunday night

 

Barcelona and Monaco's Philippe Christanval grew up here and the football pitch is named in his honour. Former West Ham left-back Herita Ilunga is another alumnus.

 

Every year the club at the Nelson Mandela Sports Centre would have to start again, filling the gaps in their teams. Yet Riyad Mahrez was never chosen. He was always left behind in Sarcelles.

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On Sunday evening a helicopter will fly Mahrez, 25, directly from Leicester's game with Swansea to Battersea heliport, and from there he will be whisked to the five-star Grosvenor House Hotel, where the Professional Footballers' Association awards night is expected to crown him player of the year.

 

As such, he will stand alongside the likes of Kevin Keegan, Kenny Dalglish, Gary Lineker, Dennis Bergkamp, Thierry Henry, Cristiano Ronaldo, Gareth Bale and Luis Suarez, all past winners.

 

And, should he win the Premier League with Leicester, it is arguable that his season will have been even more historic than those illustrious winners, all of whom played for elite teams when they won their award.

Should Mahrez win the award, and the Premier League title, it would be a fitting end to a remarkable season

Mahrez and Leicester, though, are the perfect fit, the disregarded underdogs deemed not fit for the higher echelons. 'Too small,' they said of Mahrez. 'Not tactical enough,' they mused. At times, he was not even in the first team at Sarcelles, so in reality it was no surprise no one would take a risk.

 

His team-mates and friends would disappear to the best academies in France can provide and some friends have gone on to have good professional careers.

 

Kevin Rimane went to PSG and is a squad player. Steeve Yago went to Toulouse and plays for their first team. Baissama Sankoh went to Guingamp and is on loan at Brest in the French second tier. But Mahrez was always left at home.

 

'Riyad always had talent but he was a late developer physically,' says Mohamed Coulibaly, the sporting director of AAS Sarcelles, the sports club located in the heart of the Parisian suburb, which has nurtured athletics and archery world champions and tennis and rugby professionals as well as a cohort of professional footballers.

 

Coulibaly was one of his first coaches and is in regular touch. 'He was very small, very frail. And he wasn't quick, he was slow, so it was hard for him,' he says.

 

'Between the ages of 12-17 he found it difficult. But despite all of this he never stopped believing in himself. He had a huge confidence in his own ability, the same confidence he shows when he's the best player in the Premier League.

The 25-year-old has been the creative spark behind the league leaders, but had a difficult start to his career

 

'He never hides, he's sure of his quality and he makes sure he fulfils his responsibilities. And he loves football. It's the same now he's a professional. I know after training, he'll go and train again. He loves the ball; it's his life.'

 

In Sarcelles, just a couple of miles from the Stade de France where the national team play, the housing blocks verge on the brutalist; row after row of five or six-storey buildings, all inspired by the renowned architect Le Corbusier, who envisioned a new type of idealistic urban dwelling.

 

Of course, it hasn't always been like that. Riots here in 2014 were described as anti-Semitic when a demonstration in support of Palestine turned violent.

 

But in Sarcelles they are proud of their community life and the everyday tolerance of the kaleidoscope of cultures. And at the centre of each estate there is a square, a patch of ground invariably marked up as a football pitch.

 

And as young men and boys hang around, at almost every one there is a ball at their feet and a game taking place. Boys as young as six are practising their kick-ups. And in Sarcelles they remember Mahrez as the boy who could be found in the gymnasiums playing football endlessly, sometimes well past midnight.

He may now be one of the best players in the world, but as a teenager Mahrez failed to make the grade

 

He may now be one of the best players in the world, but as a teenager Mahrez failed to make the grade

 

Boubakar Coulibaly, brother of Mohamed and treasurer of the sports club, says: 'He had a ball at his feet all the time. He made himself a footballer. For him, there was to be no other job. Only a footballer.

 

'At Sarcelles, not many people noticed it or saw that it could happen but he was sure of his talent.

 

'When the talent scouts came no one believed in him. Lots of his friends were going off to academies but not him. He never had this chance because he wasn't even always in the first team at Sarcelles.

 

'But he kept going with football because he loved it. I don't think he was disappointed because he knew that at that time he wasn't at that level. At 13, 14 they were of course looking at our first team and he was in the B or the C team.'

 

However gilded those academies might be, there is alternative line of thought in football development, that the rigorous football education given to young European players is stifling the joie de vivre which defines the greatest players.

Having failed to join an academy as a youngster, Mahrez did not find a professional club until he was 18

 

'If Riyad had gone to an academy he would not be the player he is today because the academies spoil lots of players,' says Boubakar. 'They go there too young and their technique isn't fully developed.

 

'It's too disciplined in France, too strict. And Riyad needed a degree of freedom; he needs to be free to play. That's Riyad. When you see him in the Premier League, playing for Leicester, he's amusing himself. He's free.

 

'In France they would say: "Pass the ball. Don't dribble!" In France, the players like Zinedine Zidane and Michel Platini have gone. Now we make players like N'Golo Kante, Patrick Vieira and Claude Makelele.

 

'Unfortunately in France the game is more physical and they don't look at players like Riyad [for the academies]. Another player in his team was Wissam Ben Yedder [15 league goals for Toulouse this season and scouted by Tottenham]. Those two were the same generation and now Yedder is at Toulouse and is one of the best goal scorers in France but, like Riyad, he never went to an academy because no one believed in them.'

 

When he was 15, Mahrez also had to contend with the death of his father, Ahmed, originally from Algeria, from a heart condition.

 

'It was very difficult when his dad died,' remembers Boubakar. 'The family wasn't rich and life in Sarcelles isn't easy either. But Riyad always dreamt and he wanted to become a professional, for his father as well.'

 

Despite scepticism, Mahrez did have his supporters at Sarcelles, Mohamed principal among them.

The Algerian eventually made his way to Le Havre, in the French second tier, from where he joined Leicester

 

Mahrez was beginning to develop physically and when he went to a Scottish club on trial at 16 — no-one can remember which — Mohamed had come to believe that they might have a prodigy on their hands.

 

Boubakar says: 'When he went to Scotland my brother said to me: "He could be as good as Lionel Messi". And I said to him: "You're lying!"

 

By 18, Mahrez was in the Sarcelles first team and was nagging the coaches to arrange trials. Anywhere would do. He wasn't fussy. He just wanted a foot on the ladder.

 

The club's former sporting director, Nzete Ate, arranged for a trial match at Quimper, a small town in Brittany, where the club played in the fourth tier of French football.

 

He arrived in July 2009 and they kept him on initially but there was some dispute as to whether he should be awarded a contract. At one stage he was told he would not receive one.

 

But the coach, Ronan Salaun, convinced the directors he was worth the risk. 'He was very determined and he always said that he was going to play for Barcelona one day,' says Salaun. 'No one believed him. No one believed it because there was no structure to his play.

 

'He ran all over the pitch but during that six months he had to learn to stay in his position and to play in his position.

 

'It was very difficult, Quimper is very pretty but it wasn't like Sarcelles so wasn't easy. He had to adapt to lots of changes.

 

'It was an apprenticeship and he was still in the development teams. He left on his own for Quimper, he wasn't being paid much money.'

Despite his slow start, Mahrez always had the confidence and belief that he would make it to the top

 

After a season he went to Le Harve, who were in the second division, but for their reserve team not the first team.

 

From there he eventually made his way, at the age of 20 in to Le Harve's first team.

 

He was still only playing in the French second division when Leicester scout Steve Walsh happened upon him and took the enormous risk of taking a frail, skilful young man into the hurly burly of the Championship. Even the fee of £400,000 then seemed a lot of money.

 

But Mohamed had no doubt about his move abroad.

 

'Riyad always had the aura of a great player, in his eyes, in his head and in his mentality,' says Salaun.

 

'There were players more talented than him but he always knew full well where he was heading.

 

'It wouldn't have mattered where he went. He always had this mentality of a great player.'

Mahrez, alongside Jamie Vardy, offers encouragement to youngsters who fail to make the grade first time

 

Mahrez was back at the sports club in Sarcelles just weeks ago during the international break. He remains in regular touch with his old coaches and team-mates there though it is becoming a little difficult now to move about incognito.

 

Last summer, when he was back visiting his mother and his older brother, Wahid, who still plays for Sarcelles, he would go about the district undisturbed. He would go shopping for his mum almost unnoticed.

 

Last month, as Leicester established a substantial lead in the Premier League title race, there was a change. And now, wherever he goes he is mobbed. Sarcelles has finally recognised one of its own, even if it took time to do so.

 

On Sunday, in the small cafe area next to the changing rooms at the sports club, the young men, women and youths of Sarcelles will gather round the television to watch Leicester City play Swansea. And on Sunday night, they will eagerly wait to hear whether their former team-mate has been feted as the Premier League's best player.

 

And doubtless, there will be a teenager who has been left behind at Sarcelles as his mates move on to professional careers, who will take heart and remember the inauspicious beginnings of the determined player now deemed to be one of the world's best.

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sport/football/article-3555574/Riyad-Mahrez-told-slow-small-frail-make-stands-brink-winning-Premier-League-named-player-year.html

 

I wonder what Scottish club gave him a trial? They must be kicking themselves now.

Edited April 24, 2016 by pete

[der Berliner 3,716]

Well, I would assume if someone asks him, he will remember.

 

As with Vardy, one has to wait another couple of years to check whether this season wasn't the season of their respective careers. You would hope not, of course.

[theboyharley 5]

it was St Mirren