Lilian THURAM
When he is not playing, Lilian Thuram looks like a University student,wearing light framed-glasses which give him an intellectual look. In fact, somebody like him doesn’t live on football alone. When he was still playing in Monaco, in the French first division, he succeeded in combining sport as well as study so that he managed to pass the General Certificate of Education. His life begins in Pointe à Pitre, in Guadaloupe, where he was born twenty-six years ago and where he lived until he was nine. His is a very united family: five brothers brought up by his mother because his father left when Lilian was still a child. His mother, Christiane finds a job in France and works hard in order to bring up her children. In ’82 she takes them with her to Avon, near Fontainebleau, some fourty miles away in the South of Paris. Lilian, who is very religious as all young people from Guadaloupe are, takes seriously into consideration of entering the Church. He would like to enter a seminary while he does well at school , he is the best of his class. He seems he is born for athletics, he has got a natural talent for the middle-distance race. But out of any excpectation, he finds himself in a football club, the Portugais team of Fontainebleau, formed especially by immigrants’children. It is the beginning of an extraordinary career since that young boy attracts at once the attention in the soccer world. At the age of sixteen, he is already in Melun’s national juniores and in ’88 he comes back to Fontainebleau to dispute the fifth division championship where the Monaco’s team observers discover him and don’t let him run away. Suddenly, the boy from Guadaloupe finds himself projected in the big French soccer, trained by Tigana who as a player had been one of his idols. Monaco, Nazionale, success, fame which crosses all the borders. He at last arrived in Italy where a number of clubs were calling for him. The agreement seems settled with Fiorentina but inexplicably the deal strand and unexpectedly Parma manager Tanzi makes his appearance. So, Thuram started his third season in Parma. The first two were a success; thanks to his being constantly performant, the player affirmed himself as the best defender of the Italian Championship. And up to last summer, he kept on cultivating a great dream, that is to say to come to the World Cup throne with his national team, with France. At Frabce ’98, the dream came true. Many signs made predict that would be the right time: a team formed mostly by aces and the tournament played in the French stadium. France made it, Thuram made it. The boy from Guadaloupe has conquered the world.
France World Cup . What has remained of it, which recollections, which emotions?
“What has remained inside is a special happiness, the ones that last for ever. When I was a child and I started shooting for the first time, I dreamt of the World Cup, of the opportunity to dispute these Championships one day and why not even to win them. After all, every boy has this kind of dreams. Well, now I can say that I made it, my dream has come true and this makes me happy; I recognise that I was lucky even because this keeps on being for many but a dream. Today, I am a world champion and I can really say now that I am a very lucky man since I have got a lot from my job”.
Two goals in the semi-final against Croatia. Not a bad score for one who had never scored in Nazionale up to that day. After the second goal, everybody saw Lilian Thuram sitting on the grass in Saint-Denis stadium without even rejoicing himself. And they wondered what was crossing his mind, that very moment.
“You have all seen, it was surprising even to myself. A strange matter, two goals in the semi-final for one who is not used to, are an event. Even today I can hardly understand what happened to me that day”.
What happened is that Thuram became a national hero.
“Really? Yes, maybe at that moment things went that way. The crowd was happy and was shouting my name. However, we should not forget that the victory of France has been actually a team victory, and certainly not only Thuram’s for our group was very strong and full of harmony”.
What does coming back to Italy as a world champion mean to you?
Are you still looking forward to winning? In other words, that triumph in France was it only a start or do you feel gratified, after reaching the top?
“I’m not gratified. Let’s say that nothing has changed inside me. Winning the Worl Cup made me happy, that goes without saying. But now I am here, in Parma where I’ll soon be engaged in another Championship with a strengthened team which aims very high. Soon after I’ll be busy with the competitions all over Europe. In short, enough neither to let down nor to yield to the temptation of the past. On the contrary, now I have to work with still more intensity. A world champion can’t enter the pitch with the presumption to have everything by divine law right. To run after the ball requires a hard work. By the way, now I have to work harder and harder, since it’s true I am proud to be a world champion I have to honour this title from now on as well”.
Even before the World Cup, Thuram was said to be the strongest centre half defender in the world. Now, precisely, just this title confirms that investiture.
A good way to return and to keep on pursuing future aims.
“Indeed, these aims are important because our Parma team wants to win this year. I have already said that the team is strong and wants to reach the top. By the way, everybody plays to win no matter where for who. The point is there is always a goal to achieve”.
In your career Lilian Thuram you had the opportunity to meet a lot of strikers who actually are first-rate players, real champions. Maybe one of them gave you some problems at the World Cup in France?
“With the Nazionale team I have played on the line. Rarely have I found a striker on the other side who was constantly playing on my area. No, really I can’t remember one in particular, although at the World Cup there were a lot of great strikers”.
However, France had the best of it qualifying world champion thanks above all to an extraordinary defence.
“We have suffered very little. Overall two goals, one was a penalty and the other was scored by Suker against Croatia. However, I must say that we didn’t take many risks in that tournament. I couldn’t say who played best, who deserved the more in my side. Evidently, we did a good groupwork, undoubtedly”.
“Precisely the match with Croatia’s revelation was the semi-final which offered you the opportunity to play against Brazil.
By the way, among the Croatian players, there was your team-mate, Mario Stanic. Let’s speak about the moment just before the match when both of you were exchanging looks.
“No,we weren’t. On this occasion, we had only the opportunity to speak very little to each other. We have talked for a while after the match. He was sceptical because he couldn’t make out how I could netted two goals. I told him that I could hardly explain it to myself and so we joked together about that matter, although he was very discouraged for being eliminated since the Croatian team had strongly believed in being able to get the qualification for the finals”.
France believed in that qualification,too.But was it from the beginning of the tournament or the certainty has come match after match?
“If we think for a while about the players who formed the French team, we can understand a lot. Never had the team been so strong as this year, full of important and talented players so that this victory was not at all a surprise. There were many strong teams at the World Cup but France ranked easily among the best teams, besides having another big advantage that’s o say to play home before their fans”.
What did you think when you saw Suker scored the Croatia’s goal?
“I had as a flash of terror. I thought it was impossible to be one step from a dream I was taking with me since I was a child and I couldn’t stand it was flying away like that. That’s maybe the reason why I found the strength to score those two goals”.
The dreams of Lilian as a child. A Guadaloupe-born boy coming from a poor family. His father left early and his mother was working from morning till night to keep her five children. For Lilian there was the pitch, the ball and of course there were the dreams.
“When we went shooting on a ball, we were playing the same match again and again. It was France-Brazil which was for us boys the World Cup final. The only difference was that in the children matches I was always playing the Brazilian”.
You played the French at the right moment. In the real final and not in the dreams.
“After the goal of two-one, I stayed in silence trying to realize what I had done. Desailly rushed on me : “What have you done?, What have you done?” he kept on saying to me. But I couldn’t understand anything, I had scored with my left foot and I thought it was a miracle, as with that foot I usually kick the ball in the stand. I think it will never happen again to score a goal of this kind”.
Afterwards did you understand that double goal?
“I think I did. To be honest I didn’t want to stop playing right at the semi-final, I didn’t want a dream I was taking with me for a lifetime broke right there”.
As far as we know, in France great care, attention and sensibility are given to the younger players. This is said to be one of the reasons why Jaquet’s National team succeeded; they hit the mark reaching the most important aim.
“That’s true and the proof is that from Europe they are now looking more carefully at the French players even at the younger ones. For example, at the Inter team there are three French who are not older than boys. In Italian soccer, great attention is paid to the youth too. And Nazionale of course takes great advantage over that”.
When Thuram arrived in Italy, he was certainly not unknown. But even a famous champion can still learn something from a new soccer club and from a difficult and qualitative championship like the Italian one.
“I have learnt a lot in Italy. When I first arrived here I probably had talent, however I had to ripen tactically. I learnt to work differently, that’s to say in a harder and more precise way but then one can see the results on the pitch. Here, I have certainly become stronger physically as well as technically”.
Ancelotti was the coach who guided the former Thuram at Parma, whereas Malesani is the present trainer . It seems however that Lilian didn’t suffer any repercussion at all. This proves that changing coaches has not struck him very much.
“I think that the tactic is more or less the same. We play high, we do pressing. The only difference is that now we are three in the defence area, but in the end in three or in four doesn’t matter a great deal since who plays forwards goes on covering in the end the backwards area”.
With regard to young French talents. Do you feel like naming one you would bet on?
“They are many and no doubt they have already been noticed in Italy. However, if I have to name one, then I will say Darmat, a fellow who is not very famous outside his own country, yet. He plays in the Lens team and he is for me a great champion. In Monaco, I would say famous young players such as Henry and Trezeguet, but Christanval too who is a natural talent. We could see him in action during the Champions League match against Juventus and although it was his first international experience, he played as a veteran. I would add to this list Canut who plays in the Lyon’s team and who is certainly a promising striker”.
In the Parma team which is preparing for a top level season, who could be the man of destiny?
“In Parma there are several champions. This is a team able to do great performances. By the way, I think that Juan Sebastian Veron’s arrival has been decisive. He is really the player who emerges. It is simply spectacular watching him playing a match. There is nothing he cannot achieve”.
What about the future. If you ought to choose, would you better stop your career in the Parma team or would you prefer wearing one day the jersey of a particular team all around the world?
“I simply want to play for the best team in the world. It is simple, isn’t? Logically today I hope that team is Parma”.
It’s useless to deny that Parma which boasts a number of first-rate champions is aiming the Championship. As a matter of fact, they are not alone in the run for there are other big teams. Which are the favourite ones owing to Thuram?
“It is not easy to make any forecast. We know all the pretenders: Inter, Juventus, Milan, Fiorentina, the Roman teams. We’ll wait and see at the end which one will succeed”.
And if you should choose between the “scudetto” and the Uefa Cup?
“I wouldn’t do that. Making a choice is a mistake. Who plays football knows that far well, one should never choose. One should try to take everything is on the stake”.
Was the Champion’s League debut in Turkey harder than you expected?
“Yes, it was. And do you know what struck me most? Even more than the team on the pitch. The Fenerbahce stadium’s fans. Really amazing, very enthusiastic. To enter that stadium was really a great emotion, even for one like me who should be used to such emotions by now”.
Thuram and Italy. In the end you arrived in Parma, but the destination could have been Florence as well.
“I was then little more than a boy. Giancarlo Antognoni, Fiorentina’s ex-captain and present manager saw me. I spoke to other team managers too, there was a general agreement. Yes, I arrived very near that team, and then things stopped right there, I stayed with Monaco and soon later Parma’s manager Sogliano called himself for me.”
It happened just after the Champions League when Thuram had to keep in Angloma’s shade, who afterwards got injured. It was the beginning of a glorious career. However, in the Parma team, Lilian Thuram has added something to his natural gift.
“I have found the kind of work which enabled me to express my potentiality at its best: speed, strength, spring. When I was in France I had never been subjected to such an intensive training. It helped me a lot”.
However, it is not only a matter of physical factor.
“I have been received in the best possible way by the footballers as well as by the managers. I have never felt like out of my element, not even for a minute. At the beginning, when I could hardly speak Italian, Daniel Bravo gave me a hand and his help has been very important for me”.
Has Lilian Thuram always thought of football?
“Sincerely not. When my mother went to France for work, the first present she sent me in Guadaloupe was a singlet like the ones long-distance runners wear. I was proud of it so I made up my mind to become a first-distance runner. In Fontainebleau, I changed my mind, one day during a country-race as I fell over into a potato-field”.
Since that day, you resumed playing football, didn’t you?.
“The place where I lived was full of Portuguese, there was even a team called “Portugais”. I started with that jersey which was “bianconera” so that the opponent team called us ‘Juventus’”.
Then, you discovered France.
“My mother went there mainly to get a job to earn a living because she had to keep my brothers and me by herself. The oldest one, Gaetan is seven years older than me; at that time I was eight years old and he was fifteen. A year later, mummy had saved enough money so that she could afford to bring us with her one day to Fontainebleau. My mother has been wonderful, she has done everything by herself”.
France was your mother-country but a new country too. What about getting used to the place? Have you ever got any problem?
“If you mean racial problems or things like that , I would say definitely not. I was but a child and racism hardly matters children at all. On the contrary, as the tendency to racism demands a deliberate thought , it has much more to do with the adult world. As for me, I have never been hurted. Racism tends to hurt racists because the world is a mixture of races and people who don’t accept the difference will be feeling out of their element for ever. By the way, when I was a child and my classmates called me “Noiraude” I suffered a great deal. At that time, there was a TV cartoon with a white cow and a black one and the black absent-minded and troublemaker cow was called “Noiraude”.
Today, Lilian Thuram is a happy man. He is a world Champion and an idol in Parma. He loves jazz music, he shares a beautiful three-storied flat with Sandra, near the city and the stadium and he often goes into training by bike.
“Yes, football has made me happy however life is not only football. Jazz music? My French teacher in Avon conveyed me the passion for that kind of music. By the way, Parma is a quiet man-sized town, the right place to live in”.
If one day you ought to leave Parma, what would you like your supporters saying to you?
“That Thuram has always done everything he could to give his best. Whether they say he was a bad player or a good player hardly matters at all. What matters is the personal engagement which should never lack. But this is after all only a premature talk. The point is that I am still playing in the Parma team and it is therefore with this team that I intend to conquer important aims”.
A young fellow from France who has conquered the whole world and who perhaps when he was at his debut, had some idol to emulate too.
“Trevor was a defender and he was coming from Guadaloupe like me. However, he was not my idol because as a child I didn’t want to become a defender. On the contrary, I was crazy about Tigana who is a striker”.
It is maybe for this reason that when the moment to pass the history arrived, that extraordinary double-goal just came out from the chimney-pot hat.
“Maybe, who knows. I realize now how the Nazionale world champion is adolized by the youth. As for me, I still admire France national team of the past, Platini’s and Tigana’s. Maybe because I was then the boy and a child always sees the world with wide-open and admiring eyes”.
Lilian Thuram’s personal card
Lilian Thuram was born on January the 1st 1972 at Anse-Bertrand in Guadaloupe which is the birthplace of two other famous defenders, Marius Trevor former French national player and Jocelyn Angloma, midfield link men respectively in the Inter team and in the French national team. When he was nine years old, Thuram moved to France, at Bois Colombe near Paris, and later he settled in Fontainebleau where with the “Portugais” jersey he started playing football. Later he joined Monaco and he made his debut in the highest French division on May the 24th 1991: Toulon-Monaco 1-1. On the whole, during the six seasons in Monaco, Thuram has collected 154 presences and scored seven goals. He won the French Cup in 90-91. He made his debut in the Italian national team on August the 7th 1994: France-Czechoslovakia 2-2. Although he was asked for by both Fiorentina and Juventus, he entered Parma in the 1996 summer. On his third Italian Championship, he affirmed himself as one of the best defenders of the European soccer. In the Parma team, he plays as a defender whereas in Aimée Jaquet’s French national team as a right-wing. On July the 12th, he conquered the world champion title with France beating Brazil 3-0 in the France ’98 finals which took place at the Saint Denis stadium. Earlier he had literally dragged the team to the finals, scoring a double goal in the semi-final against Croatia which ended with France’s victory 2-1.
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