Three years ago, a group of the best teenagers in French football touched down in Paris, fresh from an adventure in the Middle East with gold medals in their luggage. With mutual embraces and good wishes, went their separate ways, sensing that ahead of them were futures of great, but uncertain promise.
These kids had just won the European Under-17 championship in Israel, coming from a goal down in the final to defeat a talented Netherlands team. A gifted playmaker named Desire Doue had caught the eye for the French. The maturity of midfielder Warren Zaire-Emery and striker Mathys Tel, given the captain’s armband for the final, had made an impression, too, as had France’s strength in depth. “A very talented generation,” the coach of that junior French side, Jose Alcocer, reflected.
Fast forward to the here and now, and the climax of the European club season, a number of those players are making space for new medals in the grown-up homes they have since moved into.
Zaire-Emery now has a Uefa Champions League title on his honours list, to add to the three French league championships and two French Cups he had already won with Paris Saint-Germain. And he’s still only 19.
Tel picked up a Europa League gold with Tottenham Hotspur, where he spent the second half of last season on loan from Bayern Munich, the club he joined soon after France’s Under-17 triumph and where his yield has been two Bundesliga titles so far.
As for Doue, he celebrates turning 20 on Tuesday as, very suddenly, a huge global superstar. He scored twice, and set up another goal, for PSG in their 5-0 demolition of Inter in Munich at the weekend, man of the match in delivering a first Uefa Champions League to Paris.
This time three years ago, he was a fresh junior champion with France but yet to play a senior club match for anybody.
Others from that cohort of French youngsters have had to be more patient in reaching their significant senior landmarks. But in the next week or so, a striker who jostled with Tel and Doue for opportunities in that French Under-17 side hopes to match Doue and Zaire-Emery in winning a full international cap.
While that pair of PSG prodigies have graduated to the senior team of France, where they were born, Junior Ndiaye is in line to make his bow, most likely off the bench, for his native UAE, hopeful his moment arrives in the forthcoming World Cup qualifiers at home to Uzbekistan and in Kyrgyzstan.
Ndiaye was born in Dubai, where his father, Samba, was a successful goalscorer for Al Nasr in the mid 2000s, a late stop-off in a varied career whose inheritance for Junior Ndiaye was some expert tutoring in how to be a top-division striker but also a broad range of options about where, if his sporting career were to soar, he might build an international future.
Samba Ndiaye was born in Senegal, but became a French citizen and a junior France international on the way to representing various French Ligue 1 clubs. He settled in France after retiring as a player and so Junior Ndiaye did much of his growing up there.
His sporting ability took him into the admired French academy system and he shone so brightly at Montpellier, he was picked for France’s Under-17s. Under Fifa rules, he still remained eligible for his country of birth, or for France, for Senegal and, via the maternal branch of his family tree, for Cameroon.
The commitment to UAE was made last year, when, with the striker continuing to make a strong impression in Montpellier’s age-group teams, he was invited into the then UAE head coach Paulo Bento’s preparations for the November World Cup qualifiers.
He trained with Bento’s squad, but watched the thumping wins over Kyrgyzstan and Qatar from the sidelines. A more refined assessment of how Ndiaye might develop in the UAE set-up would be gained playing for the national Under-23s in the West Asian Championship. Still a teenager, Ndiaye scored two goals in his three outings for Marcelo Broli’s team of up-and-coming players.
Ndiaye has moved up the gears since then. He turned 20 at the end of March and the following month made his first start for the Montpellier senior side in France’s top division. Until then, his promotion from the junior ranks had followed a sketchy path of substitute appearances, almost always in tough circumstances. Montpellier, France’s club champions in 2012, have had a dreadful season, finishing bottom of a league that Doue and Zaire-Emery’s PSG have, as usual, dominated.
But adversity can mean opportunity. As Alcocer advised his young players after they had won the Under-17 Euros, “the challenge now is to go on through the next steps, to establish a place in a senior team. Some players are very good as kids but don’t take that on into adulthood. Diamonds need polishing.”
If Doue and Zaire-Emery have enjoyed the privileged polish of a slick and serially successful PSG, Ndiaye has graduated to grown-up football in front of Montpellier fans angry at the club’s drop to the second division, a relegation confirmed with four games still left of the French league season.
He’s had to play up front in a side struggling to keep possession or create openings for forwards. He’s had to read in L’Equipe, France’s main sports newspaper, that he’d been awarded a match ranking of three out of 10 in the April defeat to Brest, although L’Equipe did acknowledge that being asked to play as a lone striker in a dispirited Montpellier put a impossibly heavy load on a young man and that Ndiaye had applied himself “diligently to the defensive tasks” for the very long periods his team were out of possession.
Three different head coaches have taken charge of Montpellier over the past nine months, too. The one blessing amid the turmoil at the club, was the last of those was Zoumana Camara, who came in to oversee the final weeks of a doomed campaign. Camara has a fine record with young players, most recently working with PSG’s Under-19s. Last weekend, he watched two of his graduates, Zaire-Emery and the scorer of PSG’s fifth goal against Inter, Senny Mayulu, take part in club football’s most prestigious final.
Camara’s eye for potential led him to recommend to Montpellier’s executives that they ensure Junior Ndiaye spearheads the club’s attempt to rise back quickly into the top division in France.
Ndiaye signed his first senior contract there two weeks ago. Camara saw plenty from Ndiaye’s first four starts in the senior league team to trust that his speed and his tireless running are a strong basis for the next phase of polishing a striker who can operate across the attacking positions.
It is now down to Cosmin Olaroiu, UAE’s new head coach, to judge how ready for high-pressure World Cup football Ndiaye may be.
