Antoine Griezmann
Football’s hottest property gives
FFT the inside track on Man Utd, Mourinho... and Zidane’s shorts
So what really happened with his big-money move to Manchester United? Did he personally call Jose Mourinho to explain his decision to stay at Atletico? And will he be at Old Trafford this time next year? Antoine Griezmann relives a turbulent few weeks while talking tattoos, trophies and taking Zidane’s shorts!
Antoine Griezmann shifts in his seat, smiles and flutters his eyelids. “Excellent question!” the Atletico Madrid forward responds to an enquiry on French early-evening chat show Quotidien into where he’ll play in 2017-18. “It’ll be decided within the next two weeks.” Host Yann Barthes takes a coquettish sip from his drink. “OK,” says the presenter, who resembles a cartoon Gary Lineker. “If I say Manchester United to you, what is your answer?” “Possible,” comes Griezmann’s reply, followed by a Gallic shrug. “On a scale of one to 10? With 10 being a done deal?” “OK… six.” “Do you realise what you’ve just said.” “Yes, I do.”
The next day, the rumour mill having already gone into overdrive regarding Griezmann’s seemingly impending transfer to Old Trafford, he makes his position even clearer. “I’m ready to go,” explains the 26-year-old. “Winning trophies is what I will be looking for when I decide my future this summer.”
Three weeks later, however, the French frontman had committed his immediate future to the Spanish club, extended his deal – now believed to be worth €192,000 per week after tax – by a year, and apologised to the people “who had misunderstood my statements”.
In an era of contract brinkmanship, it is easy to view this whole episode with cynicism, but there is more nuance here than at first sight. The saga’s defining factor came as the Court of Arbitration for
Sport (CAS) upheld Atletico Madrid’s transfer ban, for breaching FIFA rules over the signing of under-18 players, meaning Los Colchoneros couldn’t buy if they sold Griezmann.
So how, then, do you reach the truth? Was it the CAS wot swung it? Had Griezmann personally called up Jose Mourinho to pull out of the deal? What would happen if Manchester United decided to trigger Griezmann’s buyout clause anyway?
The answer is simple – you go and interview the Drake-loving and philosopher-quoting forward himself on the summer’s most notorious transfer saga. In so doing, you might even learn something about Zinedine Zidane’s shorts. Or Spongebob Squarepants, for that matter.
“DO YOU WANT TO COME AND PLAY IN SAN SEBASTIAN?”
All Eric Olhats wanted to do when he got off a flight from Argentina to Paris in early 2005 was go home to Bayonne, near France’s southern border with Spain. Instead some friends persuaded the Real Sociedad scout, who had been running his eye over a couple of players in Buenos Aires, to swing by a youth tournament over at Paris Saint-germain’s Camp des Loges training ground.
Olhats couldn’t believe what he saw. A Montpellier trialist, wearing a T-shirt with “Jamaica” written on the front instead of the official club tracksuit, came off the bench and played the last 10 minutes. Small, thin and impossibly blonde, the 13-year-old was frequently pushed off the ball, but Olhats knew that Antoine Griezmann was exactly the player that Real Sociedad needed.
“His technique and his ease of playing gripped me straight away,” Olhats later recalled. “He could do great things with the ball. I thought that if he evolved physically, he could become an interesting player.”
Olhats did some digging. He found out that only a week earlier, Metz had cancelled a trial with Griezmann because they’d already decided he was too small. Olhats asked a friend at the Montpellier academy if they wanted this technically able, but physically frail waif. They didn’t, so at the end of the tournament, Olhats gave his prodigy his card and a letter, which Griezmann was not to open until he’d got home to his parents, who were on holiday in Tunisia at the time. “Do you want to come and play in San Sebastian?” read the letter. “My parents rang him up as soon as I got home, thinking it was a joke,” Griezmann tells Fourfourtwo, laughing as he talks as if still scarcely able to believe what happened that crisp spring day. “He was watching from the stands and saw something in me. He asked me how old I was, gave me the letter and that was it. I couldn’t believe it.”
It was such a surprise, and meant so much, because of the road the Griezmanns had taken to get to that point. Little Antoine was a football obsessive. His maternal grandfather, Amaro Lopes, was a professional in his native Portugal and played for Pacos de Ferreira before moving to France to work in construction during the late-1950s, while father Alain also played to semi-professional level before focusing more on coaching youth teams in the family’s hometown of Macon.
“Football has always been our family’s passion,” Griezmann explains. Younger brother Theo recalls finding doodles at the back of his sibling’s books where Antoine had drawn himself being interviewed by French television after an important victory. “I always used to follow my dad to training when he was managing our local team in France. As I got older I was able to join in and eventually play in those teams. For me, football meant, and always will mean, enjoyment.” Beyond the family confines, Griezmann grew up idolising two players. “Zinedine Zidane was a reference point for me from 1998 onwards, because of his World Cup and European Championship performances,” he says, before independently bringing up a Manchester United name. “I used to like David Beckham a lot, too, and it’s actually because of him
“ANTOINE’S TECHNIQUE STOOD OUT – HE COULD DO GREAT THINGS WITH THE BALL. I THOUGHT, ‘IF HE GREW PHYSICALLY, HE’D BE INTERESTING’”
that my interest in tattoos first began. I wouldn’t say that I copied his style, but I admired him and would look him up on the internet so that I could find out more about him.”
Yet there were times when his love of the game was stretched. PSG, Auxerre, Saint-etienne, Sochaux and boyhood club Lyon – as well as Montpellier and Metz – had all passed on Griezmann. Father Alain and mother Isabelle had all but given up hope until that chance meeting with Olhats and Sociedad – the Spaniards less in thrall to physicality than their French counterparts – offered Antoine an alternative way.
“We must have sent hundreds of letters and I had trials all around France but the response was the same, the one I wanted least – that I was too small,” Griezmann recalls, his voice deeper than you would expect for somebody who remains relatively diminutive of stature.
“There were moments when I found it difficult, but I never gave up. I kept on fighting and here we are – I’m now living out my own dream. I don’t think that I would be where I am today, and as strong as I am, without those childhood years.”
Such strength of character was essential in his early days at la Real, eight hours and 520 miles from the family’s home in the Bourgogne.
“From a footballing point of view, I felt immediately at home there,” remembers the forward, “but I missed my family a lot – it was hard.”
Antoine initially struggled with the language and the culture shock of being so far from home. Concerned his charge may return to France, Olhats said that Griezmann could stay at his Bayonne home – an hour away from la Real’s Zubieta training ground – for three weeks. He’d end up staying there for six years, with Olhats admitting he became the youngster’s “father, mother, grandpa, grandma and best friend”.
“I owe him everything and that’ll always be the case,” Antoine says of the man who’s now his agent. “We’ve been together since 2005 – I have so much respect for him.”
“I STUDY OTHER PLAYERS TO SEE WHERE I CAN IMPROVE”
Slowly, helped by a Real Sociedad cantera ranked as the second-best academy in Europe’s big five leagues by CIES Football Observatory, Griezmann began to settle in San Sebastian. The affinity that he still holds for the Txuriurdin is clear.
“The whole club has such confidence in its young players,” explains Griezmann. “They are not scared to give the players from the cantera a chance in the first team, and because of the coaching you receive there, you have got the confidence to do your best and perform well.
“Everything is about keeping possession of the ball and being able to work in tight spaces. It’s a football education that I will always take with me wherever I go.”
Griezmann, determined to make the most of his second chance in Spain, studied everything and everyone, including videos of forwards from around the world.
“It’s something I’ve always done,” he says. “I study other players to see what they do well and to see where I can improve. I watch games from any team, in any league, on the television and study the strikers’ movements and work out their different strengths and weaknesses.”
Keen to bolster numbers, Real Sociedad’s Uruguayan coach Martin Lasarte – who had given a teenage Luis Suarez his professional debut at Nacional – brought an 18-year-old Griezmann into his first-team squad for 2009-10 pre-season. Promoted directly from the under-18s, and missing out the B and C teams, Griezmann seized his opportunity.
“I just tried to play as well as I could in every single training session so that I would stay in the first-team squad,” says Griezmann. “Martin looked after me a lot during those early first-team days, and he never stopped encouraging me.
“The striker Carlos Bueno helped me a lot, too. He was a monster in the air and used to constantly work at his aerial game. I asked him if he could help me dominate in the air like him. I admired his movements and tried to copy them.”
It certainly worked. Griezmann may only measure 5ft 9in, but he is excellent in the air, making those early concerns about his size all the more unfathomable. His first two goals at Euro 2016 last summer were headers – the second from 12 yards out against the Republic of Ireland.
“It’s difficult to explain but I had no doubts,” admitted Lasarte. “The feeling was very similar to what I felt with Luis. They share something in how clearly they see things, and how sure they are of where they’re heading and what they want. Luis wanted to get to Barcelona, Antoine to play for France. He was serious, focused and technically talented.”
“I ASKED ZINEDINE ZIDANE IF I COULD HAVE HIS SHORTS. I HAVE STILL GOT THEM – THEY ARE In A WARDROBE AT MY HOUSE In FRANCE”
Shy in those early seasons, his team-mates also recall a mischievous side to Griezmann. “He looks like an angel with those blue eyes,” Lasarte later smirked, “but he’s the devil.”
While still in the youth team, Griezmann would frequently spend his weekends as a ballboy at Anoeta. When Real Madrid came to town in late 2005, his hero Zidane’s final campaign as a professional, he wasn’t going to pass up the opportunity to secure a memento. Not even when Zizou had already agreed to swap shirts with one of Sociedad’s players.
“I asked him for his shorts,” Griezmann chuckles. He even followed Zidane back down the tunnel to get them. “I’ve still got them, actually. They’re well cared for in a wardrobe in my house back in France, in the town I grew up in. They’ll stay there until I eventually build the trophy room-cum-museum I’m planning.”
However, the Spongebob Squarepants underwear he constantly wore at the time for good luck (see FFT 248), have long since bitten the dust.
Playing to the left of Bueno, Griezmann found the net on his first start – a savage effort from the edge of the penalty area against Huesca in September – and soon established himself as a first-team regular as la Real swept to the Segunda title.
“It was an incredible feeling to score on my Real debut,” recalls the Frenchman. “I’d completed a dream, not only to start a senior game for Real Sociedad, but to score, made it extra special – I was very proud.”