Mathieu Flamini: 'We have a social responsibility, to use our platform to drive change'
Mathieu Flamini wants to be certain we are getting down to business. “I’m quite hyperactive as you know,” he says. “If we’re beginning the interview I need to start walking around. Sitting down is something I’m not good at doing for a long time.”
Moments later he is off and running. At times over the next hour it feels hard to keep pace, the ideas pinging around in a manner familiar to anyone who can picture him eating up the yards during the peak of his football career. Flamini is on a mission. He wants athletes to seize their opportunity, in fractured and rudderless times, to disrupt the status quo and use their voices meaningfully. He would like them to channel their life experience and, when the subject matter is relevant, become activists. Essentially, he would like more of them to follow in the footsteps of Marcus Rashford.
“I sent him a message telling him: ‘You’ve made us all very proud, you’ve been an inspiration,’” he says of his reaction to the government U-turn prompted by Rashford’s articulate, persistent and flawlessly reasoned argument that free school meal vouchers should be continued over the summer. “We all have to stand together so more and more athletes can understand they have a social responsibility, and can use their platform to drive positive change. We don’t accept being told to shut up any more.”
Flamini is not merely sounding off. While Rashford can speak compellingly about the sacrifices his mother made during his childhood in Wythenshawe, the former Arsenal midfielder found much of his own world view shaped when growing up in southern France.
His involvement as co-founder of GF Biochemicals, a dazzlingly successful entity that focuses on finding sustainable alternatives to oil-based products, is well known and bears no resemblance to tropes around footballers discovering sidelines in, say, real estate.
“Growing up by the sea, I could see from a very early age the impact of plastics in the water, on the beach,” he says. “It’s horrendous and makes you realise that, if we don’t change something, the place where we live won’t be liveable any more. I was very aware of everything, very curious. I always told myself: ‘If I do something else later on outside football, I want it to be around sustainability.’
“The opportunity came along, we started, and I was not very knowledgeable around everything when I began. But through the years I’ve become part of this world of passionate people who give their lives to put the planet, the environment, the sea, before even themselves. It’s very inspiring but what they are missing is a voice, a platform. So as a footballer I’ve always tried, after developing my knowledge, to create awareness and make a small impact myself.”
What he calls his “journey around sustainability” began with GF Biochemicals’ birth in 2008, when he was 24. It happened during a year in which he enjoyed the best season of his life at Arsenal and earned a move to Milan. Even for a man who just kept on going – the sight of Flamini fuelling himself with colossal bowls of pasta at the London Colney training ground was a common one – there should not be enough hours in the day. But he says such weighty external interests affected his football positively, constituting “an escape, clearing my mind, refreshing myself to come back stronger”.
During his second spell in north London teammates would look on in a mixture of amusement and genuine interest when, after training, he would change into a suit and drive off to a meeting. Héctor Bellerín, a kindred spirit, reminded him of that recently. “He told me: ‘I was thinking, wow, one day I also want to do something like that.’ We need more players like Héctor that are thinking outside the box, using their platform to create a positive impact. We speak too much about negative things. Let’s speak about beautiful things; let’s speak about love, let’s unite people.”
By now he must have completed several laps of the building – in France, though he is based in London – in which he is taking the call. The thoughts keep coming, though: Flamini is particularly interested in how elite footballers, blessed with access to some of the best doctors and nutritionists, can exert a direct influence in public health. At length, he expounds the benefits of cutting animal protein and dairy, while increasing one’s water intake, and how such decisions need not only benefit athletes. There is, he believes, an obvious place to begin informing wider society.
“I was reading about the UK standing up to obesity, the NHS being under a lot of pressure and the government doing a campaign around it. Great, finally we are talking about it – so why don’t we involve athletes, footballers, in pushing these messages to educate younger generations? Football has a role to play here. Let’s bring players into schools to speak about how important it is to eat healthily, and let’s use social media. If we want to reach a large number of kids, that’s how we need to do it.”
Flamini worries young people are “living in a system that is killing the dreams of their generation” and, more than once, points to a lack of trust in established institutions. The space between them is the one he thinks sportspeople, with their huge social media followings, can inhabit and use to bring back that faith in public figures.
Although now a businessman enjoying considerable success, he still wants to be viewed as a footballer. The sport is, he stresses, the first thing he thinks about upon waking up. As recently as last year he was playing in La Liga for Getafe; all that conditioning acumen has helped ensure that, at 36, he still feels more than physically capable. “Everything is possible,” is all he will offer on the topic of a comeback; in the meantime he stays in constant touch with developments at Arsenal, expressing particular satisfaction at the managerial promise of his former teammate Mikel Arteta.
“It was always clear he’d go in the direction of coaching,” he says. “Even back then, he’d mention it. I’m very happy the club has trusted an ex-player because for too many years that was missing at Arsenal: someone who feels, breathes and lives the club. I really hope he’ll be successful and that we’ll be one of the main contenders very soon.”
Now he is taking a seat once more and the camera, switched off while he darted about, is back on. We are finishing up but it is clear that, for Flamini, this will only be a momentary pause. “These days people really value authenticity, honesty and transparency,” he says. “We have a great opportunity to help so many people in our communities. For me, a champion is someone who not only wins on the pitch, but takes the lead off it.”