There is no real morality in football, except that relentlessness can sometimes change destiny. Far from the players who have been nursed to success from an early age and with a clear-cut career, Yvan Neyou had to overcome several obstacles before cherishing his dream of becoming a professional footballer. Today he is, and he is enjoying playing for Leganés in La Liga. “I have been preparing all my life to leave the family cocoon to be a professional, starting in 6th grade. Being here is a breath of fresh air, and it shows that I wasn’t that finished.”explains, smiling, the one who spent time with Christopher Nkunku, Amine Harit, Marcus Thuram and Allan Saint-Maximin at INF Clairefontaine. It must be said, before experiencing the great adventure in Spain, Neyou often had to face headwinds, sometimes even from training, in Auxerre.
“I remember a coach who told me “be careful not to fall into the category of training players”he recalls. But I played 15 minutes every 15 matches as a youth player, how could I have shown up? » Arriving with the label of “pheno” in Yonne, he quickly became disillusioned with it. “I was thin and short, I was not the desired profile”he believes. However, his qualities burn the retina, and in particular that of Tanguy Ndombele, originally from Épinay-sous-Sénart, a town neighboring Brunoy where Yvan Neyou fines the older ones. “We met around the age of 8. I’m a 96, and he’s a 97, but in tournaments he was always outclassed. He was truly above, even with those taller than him. Small, lively, dribbler. He even went to the CFFP (Centre Formation Foot Paris)”remembers the Nice environment, still with friends with Neyou today.
Sedan, a click, Saint-Étienne, an accelerator
In 2016, Neyou made the choice to give new meaning to his career. He joined Sedan, then a resident of National, where the love story began at 200 miles an hour. “Sedan launched my career, I can never thank coach Colbert Marlot enough. This club gave me everything and it saddens me terribly to see them today in R3”he laments. If the general public mainly discovered him under the colors of ASSE in 2020, they see this interlude more as an accelerator. Sedan was “the trigger”, and it was this adventure which subsequently opened the doors to professional football for him, in Laval, in Ligue 2. “Laval allowed me to gain self-confidence, it was there that I signed my first professional contract in 2017. I was 20 years old, I was happy to have my little apartment, I I had furnished it, it was so goodhe saw again, smiling from ear to ear. Laval was really a family club, I felt good there, and when it’s like that, I don’t need to have any spotlight on me. » Perhaps not too much shade either, yet it is in total darkness that he closes his Mayenne episode.
As is often the case in France, a player pushed out suddenly becomes a problem for the club. And we therefore sometimes wanted to attribute to him the image of a troublemaker, wrongly, as confirmed by several former members of Laval who have worked with him. “I had three returns from Ligue 2 clubs describing me as follows: “good player but difficult character.” I never had the slightest problem, when you’re young it hurts to hear that. I am touched and I choose to go abroad. » A way to clear one’s honor, and also to put oneself to the test in a completely new environment, far from one’s bearings. Direction Braga, therefore, where he plays with the second team. “Even though I didn’t play with the pros, I don’t regret anything. There are 0 choices that I regret. If I don’t feel something, I don’t go there anyway.”he insists. “Happy” combination of events: in the summer of 2020, while COVID punctuates world news and massively impacts clubs, the time has come to save pennies on the Saint-Étienne side. ASSE is looking for reinforcements at a lower cost, and this is how Claude Puel is pushing for the arrival of Neyou, whose profile ticks all his boxes.
Tanguy Ndombele: “His journey is him all spit”
“Our meeting is the result of a particular story. Yvan missed out on the circuits, I knew his representative when he was in the Braga reserve team. I was shown images and I found it interesting with great qualities”remembers the 63-year-old technician, who continues to closely follow the journey of his former player. In 2020, fifteen days after his signing in Forez, he was therefore summoned for a Coupe de France final… against PSG (the final had been postponed at the end of July due to the health context). An atypical move, for a player who didn’t know what to answer to his friends a few months earlier, when he was asked to talk about his future. Not scheduled to set foot on the pitch at the start, he finally entered at the break, to his great astonishment “Just being in the group was a surprise”remembers the person concerned. Claude Puel, in any case, was amazed by his player that day: “If you like the game, players like Yvan Neyou make you love football, and not just physical players, who are too privileged today. The Coupe de France final was the turning point, it was extraordinary and astonishing because no one really knew his level. I brought him in at 10 against 11, and he played with personality, put the team back in the right direction, even put a little bridge to Neymar (Paris had won 1-0)”…
Even today, Puel struggles to understand the management of the Saint-Etienne club with Neyou, downgraded after his dismissal in 2021: “I find it a shame that ASSE, after my departure, did not believe in him given the level he displayed. He formed a nice doublet with Mahdi Camara, today in Brest. Best friends in everyday life, and players on whom Saint-Étienne did not count, and when we see their level today, it’s a shame. » Clinging to his ideas, Neyou was still able to regain heights that were once his. In 2022, he joined Leganés, in the suburbs of Madrid, his little corner of blue sky ever since. An indisputable starter, he was the guarantor of the balance of the team, promoted to La Liga last summer. Performances which also earned him a return to the Cameroonian selection. “His journey is him all spitdeciphers Tanguy Ndombele. He’s a guy who doesn’t give up, who has come a long way, and it’s even more fun when it’s someone who’s next to you. When I have time, I watch his matches, like against Atlético where he scored. What if he was already setting off firecrackers like that when he was younger? He didn’t set off firecrackers like that, but he scored a lot of goals.”smiles the international tricolor. As for Claude Puel, he still predicts a golden future for him, as he reaches the end of his contract this summer: “There’s no problem seeing him succeed, I’m not surprised at all. In the offseason, there were La Liga clubs on him. He has the talent to join a bigger club. Yvan is a talented player, a great player.” And a player with an insatiable appetite: “I look back every week, I know where I came from, and with all the pitfalls I’ve had along the way, I know it’s good. But I’m working for more.” Play a World Cup with Cameroon in 2026? It would be beautiful.
