REPORTING. In Clairefontaine, French football celebrated the 50th anniversary of its training model

On the stairs of the National Football Center (CNF) in Clairefontaine (Yvelines), Tuesday November 14, generations collide. One step below Mathys Tel (18 years old) and Maghnes Akliouche (21 years old), Thierry Henry, their coach with the Espoirs, has taken on a facelift: Aimé Jacquet, his coach with the Blues during the victory at the 1998 World Cup, pinches his cheeks affectionately. “Titi” responds with deference.

These scenes multiplied in Clairefontaine on Tuesday: 700 former trainees and educators were invited by the French Football Federation (FFF) to celebrate “50 years of excellence in French training”. Generally accustomed to calm a few days before a French team match, the CNF is buzzing at the start of the day. The widespread good humor gives the event the feel of a reunion of old classmates.

“It’s more of a family reunion.”, corrects us Ricardo Faty, member of the 1999 class of the INF (National Institute of Football, the name of the training program), which became famous for having been followed for three years by the cameras of the documentary “À La Clairefontaine”. Faty, who recently retired, is one of the 1,400 trainees who have passed through the INF since 1972, first in Vichy then in Clairefontaine after a relocation in 1988. The 50th anniversary of the creation of the INF is therefore being celebrated …in his 51st year.

“It’s 51 years old, it’s a bit paradoxical, I admit itsmiles Philippe Diallo, president of the FFF. Last year, there were a lot of setbacks which meant that the dates we had planned arrived too late.” In front of a packed auditorium, the leader recalls at the start of the day, before two round tables which will last two hours, “that the French training system is envied by many people“.

“When you have done the INF, you can go anywhere”

In the front row, Thierry Henry is seated alongside Arsène Wenger, his former coach at Arsenal, and Roger Lemerre, winner of Euro 2000. In the audience, Raymond Domenech and Frédéric Antonetti share a moment of laughter, before to listen to several speakers discuss on stage the keys to the success of French training: sporting but also educational projects, diversity between players and even the development of women’s football…

For men, the two Euros (1984, 2000) and the two World Cups (1998, 2018) won, as well as the number of professional players exported around the world (more than 1,000) testify to the success of the model. Among women, “perhaps a major title is missing to highlight the work we have been doing for 50 years.”underlines Sabrina Delannoy, deputy sports director of the women’s section of Paris Saint-Germain.

Among the guests, not all have experienced the same journey as successful players like Didier Deschamps or Kylian Mbappé. Some therefore take advantage of the moment to chat with certain stars of the France team including the captain of the Blues, Youssouf Fofana, Alphonse Aréola and Marcus Thuram, who take part in the selfie game. Others take photos in front of the giant replicas of the World Cup which sits at the entrance to the CNF.

But they all share the fact of having benefited from support during their training, which was useful to them later. “We always say that once you have done the INF, you can go anywhere. We have this adaptability, we can blend into the collective”, says Christian Skubiszewski, from the 1983 class at Vichy. The latter did not evolve beyond the second division. Like him, his ex-teammate in Mulhouse, Mathieu Zimmermann, now works in construction. “Many trainees have experienced failure, but the INF has enabled them to do better”continues Zimmermann.

Mental health, a priority

This is one of the areas for improvement described to us by Benjamin Nivet, now a consultant for Amazon Prime Video, who continues discussions with his former friends from the 1990 class: “We need to work on well-being and mental preparation. 90-95% of trainees do not succeed, so we must be able to support them.“A conviction shared by Hubert Fournier, national technical director:”Health and well-being must be treated as a vector of performance like the technical, the physical, the tactical.“

Celebrating French training also means thinking about future solutions to make it sustainable. After a morning of boasting about the French successes in front of former trainees, Philippe Diallo returns to journalists on the inauguration in September in Clairefontaine of a research center for “the use of new technologies applied to football”when Jean-Michel Aulas, involved with the FFF for the development of women’s football, announces that he wants to go from 235,000 young players licensed today “to 500,000 within five years”.

As everything is not perfect, Didier Deschamps deplores, for his part, that “some players leave early (abroad). Too early perhaps”. Very young departures which often benefit the French national selections, but from which Ligue 1 suffers. Hence the stated desire to extend the first professional contracts, currently three years, up to five years. “A little French anomaly”which President Diallo wishes to correct “as quickly as possible” to allow clubs to convince their nuggets to be more long-term.

If everyone is well aware of the challenges ahead, when it is time to attend the training of the French team at the end of the afternoon, the moment is above all one of sacred union between all generations. “It’s been almost 20 years since we last saw each other for some, but it’s as if we left each other yesterday“, describes Abou Diaby. The ex-French international (16 caps) stops for a few seconds to hug a former teammate. The hours pass and it is still time for the reunion of a family who does not want to stop to grow.