Tag: Making

With his pace, nimble footwork and explosive shooting, his ability to play in multiple attacking positions and his humble, hard-working attitude, Tottenham’s deadline-day signing Mathys Tel would appear to possess everything he needs to become a firm fan favourite. Albeit with one, minor exception: his all-time favourite footballer is Arsenal’s greatest ever player.

“Who was my role model? Thierry Henry,” Tel said in a 2023 interview. “I started playing football at the age of five, in 2010-2011, and he was at the end of his career, but I was always watching videos of him on YouTube: his speed, his goals, his technique. He’s someone I looked up to when I was little. I’d love to have the same career as him and I’m trying to become a really great player like him.”

Tel, who does not turn 20 until April, remains in the foothills of his professional career, but the similarities with Henry’s own formative experiences as a footballer are striking. Both have Caribbean roots and hail from the Paris suburbs (Tel from Villiers-le-Bel in the north, Henry from Les Ulis in the southwest); both honed their craft at France’s fabled Clairefontaine youth training centre; both made the grade at historic French clubs with acclaimed academies (Tel at Rennes, Henry at Monaco); both left France at a young age to play for storied foreign clubs (Tel joining Bayern Munich at 17, Henry signing for Juventus at 21).

Tel, like Henry, is a speedy, right-footed attacking player with a penchant for cutting in towards goal from the left flank and who doesn’t particularly enjoy heading the ball. And just like his idol (under whom he made four appearances for France Under-21s in 2023), Tel has arrived in north London hoping to kickstart a promising career that was just threatening to flatline at his previous club.

The Henry connection will not delight Tottenham’s supporters (don’t worry, he won’t be mentioned again), but if Tel can emulate even a fraction of his hero’s achievements in English football, you suspect his boyhood adulation will be forgiven.

Given Tel has been brought to Tottenham Hotspur for his prowess in the final third, it comes as a surprise to learn that he spent his earliest years on the football pitch trying to stop goals rather than score them.

“I played him in defence,” Eric Campaner, Tel’s first coach at his local club JS Villiers-le-Bel, tells The Athletic. “We played on half-pitches and because he was so powerful, there wasn’t enough room for him to show off all his qualities if he started in attack. When he came forward from the back, it enabled him to really express his talent.”

Tel joined the club at the age of six and stayed there for five years. An early developer in every aspect, he had his growth spurt young. Team photographs from the time show him towering over his team-mates – and coaches – despite still being some way short of puberty. It was not only in the height stakes that he was head and shoulders above everybody else. “Mathys had everything,” says Campaner. “Athletically, he was at the top. He was quick, he was powerful and he had natural talent. I don’t know how you can explain it. Above all, he loved the game. After school, he’d come to the pitches and put his dad in goal. It was a real ordeal for his dad because by the age of nine, he already had a monstrous shot on him.”

Tel (back row, second from right) at his first club JS Villiers-le-Bel (Eric Campaner)

Born in Sarcelles in April 2005, Tel grew up in nearby Villiers-le-Bel, a town of some 30,000 people that lies 11 miles north of central Paris, a 13-minute bus ride from the nearest station on the RER D suburban rail line. He lived with his parents, Michel and Margaret, and his elder sister, Malicka, in a third-floor apartment. As is always the case in tales such as this, a football was never far away. “Everyone knew him in the neighbourhood, because he wasn’t afraid of playing against the big kids,” his sister told Le Parisien in 2023. “They were always blown away by what he could do. Whenever it was time to go home for dinner, he’d often have the excuse of a match.”

Tel moved on to Paris FC at the age of 11, having caught the eye in friendly games against the club while playing for Villiers-le-Bel. If the move brought him into the orbit of a professional outfit for the first time (albeit one that was rather down at heel), it would also make him intimately acquainted with the 18-mile stretch of road that separated his family home from the club’s spartan training facilities at Stade Dejerine, nestled against the Peripherique ring road on the French capital’s easternmost flank.

“He’d finish school, quickly do his homework and then his father would bring him to training,” recalls Reda Bekhti, who immediately promoted the 11-year-old Tel to his Under-13s side at Paris FC. “It was 30km each way, three times a week, plus matches on Saturdays. He’s got good support around him. His father and mother are very polite, very respectful. They weren’t the kind of parents who’d bombard you with needless questions. He’s the same: very respectful, very humble and has always had his head squarely on his shoulders.”

Tel, back row second from right, with his Paris FC team-mates (Photo credit: Reda Bekhti)

News travels quickly between the scouts and recruiters who crowd the touchlines of the municipal pitches in the Ile-de-France region, in which the city of Paris lies, and it didn’t take long for Tel’s talents to attract attention. He had trials with Paris Saint-Germain and Lille, neither of which went any further, and there was also interest from clubs including Monaco and Lens before Rennes entered the fray.

Rennes’ academy is regularly ranked as the best in France by the French Football Federation and the Brittany club has a strong record of recruiting talent from the Paris region, helped by the high-speed TGV train line that whisks passengers to and from the capital in a little over 90 minutes. Motivated by the chance to follow in the footsteps of Rennes alumni such as Yoann Gourcuff, Ousmane Dembele and Eduardo Camavinga, Tel signed a kind of pre-contract – known in France as an accord de non-sollicitation (non-solicitation agreement) – with Les Rouge et Noir in 2018.

Rennes made their move after Tel was selected to join the prestigious youth set-up at Clairefontaine. But it was there that something occurred that remains an entirely incongruous detail in the story of a young man who is described as polite, well-mannered and mature by practically everyone who has ever met him: he got kicked out.

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In early French press reports about Tel’s back story, the reasons for his exclusion from Clairefontaine were said to be shrouded in mystery. The reality is that it was punishment for a fight with a classmate at an affiliated school. “He was provoked and he made the mistake of reacting to the provocation,” says Gadiri Camara, who has been Tel’s adviser since the player was 14. “He already had a bit of a status by that point and the directors at Clairefontaine decided to make an example of him. For him, it was a catastrophe. He felt that he’d been blacklisted, that he’d never play for France, that people would say he was a thug. But it forced him to have a look at himself and it taught him the importance of self-restraint.” (The Clairefontaine director Christian Bassila did not respond to The Athletic’s request for comment about the incident.)

The reaction at Rennes was one of measured concern. “We took pride in our values and we said to ourselves: ‘If this boy has been excluded, maybe he’s not the kind of boy we want at the academy’,” recalls one source, speaking on condition of anonymity in order to protect relationships. “But we continued to follow him.”

Tel had enrolled with another local club, ASJ Aubervilliers, in 2017, turning out for them each weekend after spending the week at Clairefontaine. But he became frustrated by a lack of playing time there and in October 2019, he signed for Montrouge FC 92 in the southern Paris suburbs. At Clairefontaine, he had been considered a defender, but he had started playing in attack at Aubervilliers and continued to do so at Montrouge, typically lining up as a left-sided forward. If being cast away from Clairefontaine’s historic chateau, pristine pitches and stately oak forest had dented his morale, it didn’t show. “He demonstrated from his first training session that he was determined to win every single little exercise and after a couple of sessions, he’d won everyone’s respect,” says former Montrouge coach Thomas Berlette.

Shortly before the Covid pandemic hit Europe in March 2020, Montrouge’s Under-17s played their Rennes counterparts in a friendly and Tel scored the only goal. “Ball in behind, he dribbled the keeper and scored,” says Berlette. “A striker’s goal!” It was by now apparent that his future lay as an attacker, but when he formally joined Rennes later the same year, his coaches elected temporarily to deploy him in central midfield. “We wanted to develop his reading of the game, his decision-making and his scanning, so we started playing him as a No 8,” explains Romain Ferrier, who was Tel’s coach with the Rennes reserves during the 2020-21 season. “It wasn’t easy for him — we unsettled him a little bit! But he understood the thinking behind it and even though he sometimes struggled, he never gave up.”

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Tel made his senior Rennes debut as a substitute against Brest in August 2021, breaking Camavinga’s record to become the club’s youngest ever player at the age of 16 years and 110 days. The attention from other clubs that he had long attracted was by now reaching a crescendo, but the youngster took it in his stride. “There’d be scouts from all over the place — all the European big guns and from all the leagues,” says Ferrier, who now works at Marseille. “But he handled it all very calmly. I never saw any signs of complacency or easing off. He’d always be on the pitch 10 minutes before everyone else, working on his technical skills and his first touch. When you worked with him every day, you saw that he had objectives and that he was getting things lined up in order to achieve them.”

Capped multiple times by France at youth level, Tel tasted glory at the Under-17 European Championship in Israel in 2022 as the captain and attacking figurehead of a team that also featured his Rennes team-mates Desire Doue and Jeanuel Belocian, Lyon right-back Sael Kumbedi and PSG midfielder Warren Zaire-Emery. “Mathys climbed the steps pretty quickly at every level,” says Lionel Rouxel, his coach with France’s Under-18s and Under-19s. “He’s a quick player, who needs space to run into behind, and he’s capable of scoring goals because he’s very adroit in the box. He can play up front as part of a two or on his own. As a person he’s reliable, well balanced, humble, attentive, a competitor and a leader — both in the changing room and on the pitch. He has all the personality traits required to succeed.”

(Jack Guez/AFP via Getty Images)

Tel has, to date, played eight times for France’s Under-21s, scoring three goals. While he is still awaiting his first call-up to Didier Deschamps’ senior side, where the competition for attacking roles is not exactly feeble, there is a sense of expectation at the FFF about the international future that may await him. “The only thing he’s been lacking of late is playing time, so I hope he’ll get some at Tottenham,” says Rouxel. “We would like him to play more because we’re counting on him for the senior team one day.”

Bayern signed Tel in the summer of 2022. He had played only 119 minutes of first-team football for Rennes, spread across 10 appearances (all as substitute) and including a 46-minute outing in a Coupe de France defeat on penalties. After joining on a five-year contract for a fee potentially worth up to €28.5million, the 17-year-old scored on his full Bayern debut at Viktoria Cologne in August 2022 to break Jamal Musiala’s record as the club’s youngest ever goalscorer.

(Christof Stache/AFP via Getty Images)

He made regular run-outs as a substitute in his debut season, under first Julian Nagelsmann and then Thomas Tuchel, demonstrating an unerring eye for goal by scoring five goals in 22 Bundesliga appearances at a rate of one every 79 minutes. Tuchel continued to grant him playing time last season, enabling him to notch 10 goals across all competitions, but, barred by the irrepressible Harry Kane, he found opportunities harder to come by under Vincent Kompany in 2024-25, failing to find the net in 14 appearances.

Internally, Bayern had faith in Tel and were convinced about his potential to become an elite player. Some at the club felt that he was a player who was driven by his emotions and who needed to feel that the supporters were behind him in order to perform. With no clear path to more regular first-team football ahead of him, Tottenham’s offer of a six-month loan deal with a €55m (£45.7m; $56.9m) option to buy was difficult to turn down. Manchester United were among a number of other Premier League clubs who also expressed interest, but they balked at Bayern’s request for a €5m loan fee and refusal to include a right-to-buy clause, clearing the way for him to join Spurs. The 19-year-old scored his first goal in Tottenham colours in Sunday’s 2-1 defeat at Aston Villa in the FA Cup fourth round.

(Justin Tallis/AFP via Getty Images)

Tel’s attitude with regard to his career path is encapsulated by a motto that he has had stamped on his Instagram account for years: Précis pas pressé, which means ‘Precise not hurried’ (admittedly it works a good deal better in French). He prides himself on having adopted a deliberately patient and methodological approach to his career, taking the time to analyse all of his options in minute detail with his family and his advisors before deciding which path to take.

“He’s someone who needs a clearly defined roadmap,” says one source, speaking on condition of anonymity in order to protect relationships. “He wants to know where he’s putting his feet.” Having initially rejected Tottenham’s overtures earlier in the transfer window, it is characteristic of Tel that he eventually agreed to join the club only after being given a detailed explanation about exactly how he would be expected to fit into the team by head coach Ange Postecoglou.

“For all the talk around the transfer, it only became real to him when the coach picked up the phone to talk to him,” says Camara, Tel’s advisor. “The discussion he had with the coach had an impact because he was very clear and very direct and we could tell that he knew about Mathys’ profile. Mathys simply wants to be on the pitch. He was at Bayern for two and a half years and he learned a lot alongside great players like Thomas Muller and Manuel Neuer. But he’ll be 20 soon and we felt that the apprenticeship stage of his career was over. The moment has come for him to take centre stage.”

In the context of his meticulously plotted career roadmap, Tel’s decision to swap Munich for London represents an unexpected 700-mile diversion. But having run into traffic at Bayern, he will hope that switching lanes to Tottenham allows him to experience the joys of the open road.

Additional reporting: Seb Stafford-Bloor, Laurie Whitwell

(Top photos: Getty Images; design: Will Tullos)