ON VIDEO – Stade Rennais: Warmed Omari, shaped by the Villejean district

France Bleu Armorique surveyed the Villejean district in Rennes, alongside Rennes defender Warmed Omari, who grew up in this district and who still lived there until the end of last season. Born in Mayotte, arrived in France at the age of five in the Dijon region, the defender and his family then took the direction of Brittany to settle in Villejean. Through meetings with his friends and a former teacher, Warmed Omari tells us about his youth in the Rennes district, why he remains attached to it, and his desire to be an example for the young people of Villejean.

The video report in Villejean with Warmed Omari

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The Audio Podcast

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Warmed Omari talks about his Villejean neighborhood

Warmed Omari arrived in Villejean in 2011. Born in Mayotte, the Rennes defender grew up in Reunion, then in Dijon before his parents moved to Brittany, first in Saint-Méen-le-Grand then in the Villejean district reindeer. Warmed Omari grew up here, and is very attached to his neighborhood, which he defends in the face of criticism and the fantasies it sometimes generates: “As in all neighborhoods, there are times when it’s hot. But Since I’ve been there, I think it’s calmed down a lot.__. The young people understood which was the right road to take. Today it is more livable for families, for mothers who have their children growing up.“

Warmed Omari gave us an appointment at the Maison Verte in Villejean, a neighborhood house covered in graffiti, and whose entrance is overhung by the phrase “unity in diversity“. We meet there one of his childhood friends, Fazal. He notes the growing notoriety of Warmed Omari in Villejean: “All the kids in the neighborhood refer to him. If you talk to someone in the neighborhood they will say “we in the neighborhood have Warmed”! And that’s nice, because it’s a good reference.“

A few hundred meters further, Warmed Omari takes us to the foot of the tower where he grew up, and where he still lived until this summer, next to the Andrée Chedid school group: “After the match at the Parc des Princes last year, I returned to my tower in Villejean and slept at my mother’s house. It’s nice ! I was still living in my neighborhood for my first pro season and I think that helped me. It helps to keep your feet on the ground__, because we are always with the same people. We also see the same problems that we have seen since childhood. I said to myself “why change?”, when the difficulty is just below. It is useless to take the big head. For me it helped me and it was very important.“

Accompanied by another friend, Nassim, he recalls his childhood in the neighborhood and what he saw there: “There is more solidarity, we say to ourselves that the families who live there have less money. So every time we see someone in trouble, we help them. We see a mom outside who has her shopping bags, we help her put them up__, we do everything to help people and I think there is more solidarity.“Warmed Omari is a respectful kid:”He is an intelligent guy, smiling and really very very respectful. In the neighborhood the young people see him as a star“, describes Nassim.

“For education there were my parents, but also dating outsideexplains Warmed Omari. I always surrounded myself with respectful people, so I could only be respectful myself. From a young age i never tried to do things out of my line of conduct, anything illegal or things like that because i was surrounded by good people__. And as I want to send back a good image of what my parents taught me, and for my children later, I have to stay straight.“

But even in Villejean, Warmed Omari does not feel that his status has changed: “What I like in Rennes is that I haven’t changed anything in my lifestyle, I can go out when I want, and at most there will be two people who will stop me, and it’s always very polite, just a photo, a smile and it makes people happy. I don’t think footballers in other cities can go out like that.“

On the importance of his neighborhood in its construction, Warmed Omari concludes: “These are my roots. That’s where I have to come often, when I go to the mosque I always come to Villejean… I’ll never forget the times I spent here, the people I met. I will always be linked to Villejean.“

Late emotional and footballing maturity

After crossing the Kennedy slab, we go in front of the Rosa Parks college, the former college of Warmed Omari in Villejean. We meet Sébastien Fressier there, his former sports teacher and former football section coach, who signed him at the Rennes TA at the time. He remembers a boy who was very above the rest, but who could sometimes be subject to frustration: “He was a very competitive 11-12 year old boy, who did not accept that others could not be in the same commitment as him. He wanted to win and at that age we do not accept that we can lose because the other puts less intensity, so he had trouble managing that__. Its construction had to go through that. It’s funny because now everyone knows the boy who is a little introverted, who doesn’t talk too much, who is calm, whereas this emotional mastery was far from being won at the beginning.“

A difficult management of his emotions which sometimes caused problems for Warmed Omari during his formative years. To remedy this, his advisers organized sessions with a psychologist. All this probably explains why Warmed Omari revealed himself “lately”, at 21, when there are already many players aged 16, 17 or 18 on Ligue 1 pitches. He says: “One day I got mad at the director of the training center, and that was the trigger. I thought that was too much. I think that at the age when I still had these frustrations, the young people who are in Ligue 1 today already have a form of calm. I was too focused on things other than my football skills, and that delayed me. (…) My agents have set up sessions with a psychologist__. Even if I’m not someone who likes to talk about my parents, what’s going on, my brothers and sisters… But I did violence to myself and it did me good. It’s true that for us a psychologist is for crazy people! So we don’t see ourselves going to see someone to talk about our life, when we have to see it differently.”

Currently in re-athletics, Warmed Omari should return to the field after the World Cup break.