It was enough for four minutes for Yoann Gourcuff to remind the Beaujoire which player he was. Discreet since his retirement, the former playmaker made a rare appearance this Tuesday evening during the Legends match organized in Nantes. Aligned in the stars team, he ignited the stadium from his first balloons, immediately confirming that he had not come to figuration. The highlight: a series of short dribbles and marched in the opposing surface, which caused a thrill in nostalgic supporters. Upon receipt of a right side center, he erased two defenders with crazy ease, before chaining a feint and a clever pass. The public applauds everything. The tone is set.
Always so elegant ball on the foot, Gourcuff has signed a performance full of freshness and mastery. Placed in a role of number 10, the position which was for a long time, he was very active. Technically clean, inspired in his transmissions and altruistic in the game, he recalled by sequences why so many people had compared him to Zinedine Zidane at his beginnings. At the tenth minute, he reoffends: inner hook, lobed pass for his winger, and saving intervention by the opposing goalkeeper. We feel at home a real desire to play, far from the image of a man withdrawn in himself since the end of his career.
Gourcuff, nostalgia for elegant football
Gourcuff, a clearing character, still arouses a lot of emotion. Harder for his grace ball at the foot, criticized for his physical fragility and his career choices, he remains one of the greatest “and if” in French football. This charity match in Nantes, like that of Bordeaux last year, where he had shared the field with Zidane, recalls that he has never really lost his magic. His technical gesture this Tuesday will not make the headlines, but for the lovers of the game, he woke up a memory, a nostalgia, almost a regret.
Gourcuff brings back magic in Nantes
Other prestigious names were legends in this match. Robert Pirès, Claude Makelele, Christian Karembeu, Mahama Vahirua, Patrice Loko or Michel Der Zakarian were also a party. An evening under the sign of memory and emotion, in a Beaujoire full of benevolence. The commentator of the channel The team did not fail to greet the Gourcuff performance of a sober but eloquent: “He is not there to joke. »»
However, an absence challenged: that of Jérémy Toulalan. Former accomplice of Gourcuff in Lyon and in the French team, trained in Nantes too, he did not take part in this meeting, preferring to continue to cultivate anonymity. An assumed distance, unlike his old friend, returned for an evening to restore a little light to the game. And remember that grace, sometimes, never dies.
