“The fact that Warren Zaire-Emery is taken” into the French team, “it’s exceptional and wonderful,” rejoices Zoumana Camara, the under-19 coach at PSG, where the 17-year-old plays.
Coach Didier Deschamps announced, Thursday, November 9, the list of 23 players called up for the French football team. The Blues will face Gibraltar in Nice, Saturday November 18, then Greece in Athens, Tuesday November 21, two matches counting for the Euro 2024 qualifiers.
Among the lucky ones, a new one: the young Paris Saint-Germain (PSG) player Warren Zaire-Emery. This is the first time he has been called up to the French team, at only 17 years old (and 245 days old, or 8 months). And could therefore be the youngest player to wear the France team jersey since the Second World War, thus beating the recent record of Eduardo Camavinga, selected for the first time at 17 years and 303 days (9 months).
A selection that does not surprise Zoumana Camara, 44, the under-19 coach at PSG since June 2021. “Warren Zaire-Emery is a boy who loves football and has no limits”, he says to the Sports department of Radio France. He saw Warren Zaire-Emery join his team at the age of 16. He was already outclassed among the youngsters. A young man “not very talkative”but “very observant, very diligent and very attentive”.
franceinfo: What did you think of Warren Zaire-Emery the first time you saw him?
Zoumana Camara: He is a quite reserved, quite shy boy, who is not very talkative. He is very observant, very diligent and very attentive to everything that happens around him. Afterwards, I found a very disciplined boy, sometimes too much! I wanted him to relax, to be relaxed. I’ll tell you the paradox: I sometimes wanted him to do stupid things or do little stupid things, so that we could tell him: ‘Don’t do that.’ But no, he was very diligent, very serious and that was the first thing that already struck me about him.
As an educator, what did you like about his game? What still surprises you now?
It’s his maturity, it’s his ability to play, to do what the game asks in the areas where he finds himself. He had a certain maturity. When he is very low on the pitch, he knows how to protect the ball, he plays with one or two touches and when he is much higher up, he has this ability to be able to project himself and use his speed. He could do it lower, but he played simple and did what the game asked. This is something that struck me about him: this maturity in his game.
Are you surprised to see what he’s producing now?
I want to say yes and no, because he goes through the stages in such a natural way and we feel that he is not in overdrive. He’s doing Warren, actually. Everything he has always done among young people, now he can do it among the pros. Where it surprises me is when he already makes himself indispensable to the first team. In that respect, he bluffs me. But otherwise, as for the rest, there are no surprises in his game. He’s a boy who has no limits, who we want to put a little in every line.
He can play in front of the defense, he will recover balls. When you put him higher, he has this projection, with or without the ball. He has a good state of mind, he has a good long game, he has a good short game, good positioning with the three-quarter body, he takes the information. He’s a boy who has almost everything, who must continue to improve, but who is on an open path. He has the highway in front of him and the state of mind that goes with it. And we must not forget that. And everything he does is well deserved and it’s not surprising. He has no limits, he gives himself none. And that’s also what makes it strong. He’s a boy who simply loves football.
Is it too early to be in the French team?
It’s a choice that the coach made, according to his desires in relation to the group he has. The fact that he’s caught, it’s exceptional and it’s great for this boy in terms of what he’s doing at the moment. It seems so obvious. When we see it evolve, we are already delighted. As an educator, we are proud of it. We are proud to have worked with him and to have accompanied him on his journey. There is a lot of joy and satisfaction. But this is only the beginning for him.
Do you remember an action? Of a goal?
We can talk about the goal he scored against Juventus for example, in the Youth League. He punches, he accelerates, he arrives in front of the goalkeeper, he is on his left side and he uses his left foot to steal the ball. In fact, he uses the right gestures for the right position. If we see the purpose of the action, we have the impression that it is an attacker, when we look at the action or in the middle, we realize that it is a midfielder, he has the projection and when we look at it at the beginning, it’s this ability to be able to orient yourself, to turn and take spaces. There is also this match at home against Bruges where we reverse the situation, again in the Youth League. We are behind and ten against eleven, we win this match 3-2. But when we have a player running for two, we are almost tied. And when I brought him on at half-time, the game changed.