The coach of the French team Didier Deschamps tells how, as a studious young student in his native Basque Country, he was unable to pass the baccalaureate once he arrived at the FC Nantes training center.
Before becoming captain of OM, winners of the 93 Champions League and captain of the French team, 98 world champions and 2000 Euro champions, Didier Deschamps was first the little prodigy of the youth teams of the ‘Bayonne rowing. Requested by several D1 clubs, the small midfielder opted for FC Nantes, not only for the infrastructures and the playing culture of the Canaries, but also because he had the assurance of continuing his studies.
A studious student in Anglet (where he grew up) then in a Catholic college in Bayonne (where he only discovered football), “La Dèche” did not manage to complete his course to obtain the bac B ( then became the bac ES). After being quickly promoted to the reserve team, the determined young player was thrown into the deep end by Jean-Claude Suaudeau on September 27, 1985, two weeks before his 17th birthday.
Until the terminal…
The Blues coach tells beIN Sports (in Salon VIP Champions): “ My second year went well, but, in first year, I had already joined the professional group, so it became complicated with training, matches, internships… And then in final year, I played. I inevitably gave up, unfortunately. And I was made to feel by Nantes that they had taken me not to be a high school graduate, but to be a footballer. One does not prevent the other, but it was sincerely incompatible to follow the two with the rhythm, plus the internships with the French youth teams… Her head, she did not have the capacity to be able to follow the two “.
After two seasons between the first team and the reserves, Deschamps signed pro in 1987 by directly becoming the captain of the Nantes team, to play in central defense alongside his friend Marcel Desailly and Antoine Kombouaré (before moving to number 6). It was on April 29, 1989 (six months after his arrival at OM) that the Basque honored his first selection for the French team. Michel Platini launched Deschamps in the second half against Yugoslavia (0-0) at the Parc des Princes, in qualifying for the 1990 World Cup.
