French international from 2012 to 2014, Mapou Yanga-Mbiwa saw his professional career end at OL in 2017, where he was sent to the reserve team for two years.
More than six years after his last match, on November 29, 2017 with OL, Mapou Yanga-Mbiwa resumed his career, at the age of 34, in the jersey of Istres FC, in National 3. He signed an amateur contract there, with mileage reimbursement. History of coming full circle, he who grew up in Port-de-Bouc, in Bouches-du-Rhône, after leaving the Central African Republic at the age of 8.
French champion in 2012 with Montpellier, his training club, Yanga-Mbiwa subsequently became a French international, and Didier Deschamps recalled him in November 2014 (for his fourth and final selection). After a failed experience at Roma, the central defender arrived at OL in 2015. Two years later, he had an incredible “ galley », by being sent to the reserve team from November 2017 to… February 2020!
“I was unhappy, I was at the bottom of the hole”
“ There, I went through all the states. A lot has happened. I kept my head up to try to get out of this mess. When I started, I was impatient, but over the last few seasons, I learned to control myself, not to freak out. I grew out of this experience. I learned about football, about myself »he regrets in the columns of Parisian. He was for a time the darling of the Rhone public, who had taken up the hit This Girl from Cookin’ on 3 Burners.
Yanga-Mbiwa never found a way out during his last two years of contract. He has not given up on his salary of 280,000 euros per month, but has fallen very low psychologically: “In Lyon, I was unhappy, I was at rock bottom. Every day I was okay. I brought what I could. I had this exemplary behavior and I was not rewarded, without knowing the exact nature of the problem. Football is like that, sometimes cruel. The best don’t always play”.
