From Mickaël Landreau to Alban Lafont. Rewarded for his good start to the season in line with his excellent exercise in 2021/2022, the current captain of FC Nantes, who arrived on the banks of the Erdre in the summer of 2019, was selected this Monday afternoon. , for the first time in his career by Didier Deschamps in order to join the France A team. This selection follows the withdrawal of Hugo Lloris for the next meetings of the France team against Austria and Denmark. The recent winner of the Coupe de France thus succeeds the emblematic captain of the Yellowsthe last player playing in Nantes to have been called up to the Blues in 2006.
Itinerary of a precociously gifted
Youngest goalkeeper to have started in Ligue 1, with TéFéCé, at 16 years and 309 days old, selected in U15, U16, U18, U19, U20 and with Espoirs where he wore the captain’s armband, Alban Lafont demonstrates at only 23 years that it is a phenomenon of precocity. “I think he has the makings of a great. And I rubbed shoulders with goalkeepers,” said his former trainer and ex-yellow goalkeeper David Marraud in August 2019. He was not mistaken. Impressive in Toulouse, the native of Ouagadougou had decided to join Italy in 2018 with a view to taking a step forward in his career. It was finally in Loire-Atlantique that he succeeded. Thanks, among other things, to Antoine Kombouaré who does not let go of his last bastion. It allowed him to regain the form of his debut after a complicated 2020/2021 exercise and to be pre-selected for the first time last March and to be systematically so since.
“When I arrived, I found a goalkeeper in difficulty, who doubted, like the teamrewinds the Kanak technician. I thought : But this boy has talent, qualities! This level is not possible. While chatting, I saw a boy who was not in it. He is largely responsible because he is a boy who needs to work. And he wasn’t working. The first thing to do was to put the blue heater back on. That’s what he did.” And in what way. Author of remarkable performances with as a high point his match against Paris where he was credited with a 10/10 in the daily L’Équipe or even the final of the Coupe de France on May 7, Alban Lafont never took his eyes off his ambition to find Clairefontaine. “I hope I can get there one dayhe whispered a few weeks ago. I work for and I keep it in the back of my mind.“Another dream come true, at only 23 years old.