how Mike Maignan quickly went from successor to Hugo Lloris to respected leader in the French team

Despite the weight of the legacy left by his predecessor, the guardian was installed without the slightest challenge. Even if he is not expected to play against Germany on Saturday, he is expected to be one of the strong faces of the Blues at Euro 2024.

The day after the France-Germany match, which he will certainly not be able to play, Saturday March 23, due to knee discomfort, Mike Maignan will celebrate his first anniversary as number 1 goalkeeper of the Blues. He is preparing to demonstrate this status for the first time in a major international competition this summer, during the Euro in Germany. His installation has gone so smoothly that it is difficult to realize that the France team only closed the Hugo Lloris era barely over a year ago.

“Everything happened very naturally because Mike is a simple boy. He is someone who has always shown empathy and respect towards the two dinosaurs of the position, Hugo and Steve. [Mandanda] within the France group. Mike arrived with kindness, with listening, with attention, with the ambition that characterizes any high-level athlete. Nevertheless with this correct, adapted posture, that of someone who cannot shake up everything and everyone. Mike collected the keys brilliantly and very correctly”traces Franck Raviot, the goalkeeper coach of the France team since the start of the Didier Deschamps era.

A “great professional”

Called up since June 2019, Mike Maignan had time to observe his elders before obtaining playing time in 2022 with four starts ahead of the World Cup, missed due to a calf injury. The international retirements of Hugo Lloris and Steve Mandanda announced in January 2023 allowed him to move up the ranks. Since becoming the No. 1 choice, the AC Milan goalkeeper has presented impressive statistics: only four goals conceded in eight games and five clean sheets.

Above all, he made an impression from the start by stopping a penalty for his first in this new role, against the Netherlands (4-0), while the pain of the defeat in the World Cup final in the penalty shootout exercise was still lively. Three days later, during a more complicated trip to Ireland than expected, his exceptional save in the final minutes, allowing the Blues to validate their 1-0 success, made everyone agree. “Mike, it’s Mike.”Didier Deschamps then reacted, impressed, and implying that his goalkeeper was one of a kind.

“The very good, the very great goalkeeper, is often the one who is little called upon but who makes the gesture, the save which allows you to gain one or three points”, insists Franck Raviot. Not wishing to lend himself to the game of comparisons with the illustrious predecessors of Mike Maignan, the goalkeeper coach describes a character “authentic”, “meticulous”, “influential and non-influenceable”. “He is a great professional with a capital p. He leaves nothing to chance, is very demanding of himself and pays attention to the smallest detail”develops Franck Raviot, who confides that he has not changed his approach despite the change of era and the loss of the automatisms worked with Lloris and Mandanda for almost 12 years.

A born leader

“He’s a leader, a leader. He has an important personality in a group, I think his coaches like that in general”, said his teammate and friend since the youth categories at PSG, Adrien Rabiot, about him at a press conference on Tuesday. More talkative than the taciturn Lloris, Mike Maignan knows how to make himself heard on match days. Very expressive in his goals, we could see him giving instructions in the locker room against the Netherlands a year ago in a video broadcast by the French Football Federation. Behavior not necessarily obvious from a goalkeeper who had just become a starter.

Mike Maignan is not a young leader. His career was not completely mapped out. After not having his chance at PSG, he fought for almost two years to make his mark at Lille and then join the AC Milan institution in 2021. In addition to being a complete goalkeeper, good on his line , with his feet and in taking penalties, he is an experienced player. Lucas Chevalier, his successor in goal for Losc, told the Ligue 1 website in an interview how Mike Maignan had taken him under his wing.

“I worked with him for two years and he was like a big brother to me. He could have not calculated me. He was attentive to what I was doing in each session. He was very demanding of me and he didn’t didn’t hesitate to yell at me if I didn’t do things the right way.”, traced the goalkeeper selected with the Espoirs last October. For Franck Raviot, Mike Maignan is quite simply a “example to follow” for all young goalkeepers, capable of making them understand that “Success is never the result of chance..