Before commenting on the French team's matches on TF1 with its friend Grégoire Margotton, Bixente Lizarazu had a brilliant football career. Winning in particular of the World Cup, the Euro and the Champions League, the former left side has nevertheless experienced a complicated beginning of a career.
Arrived at the age of 13 at the Girondins de Bordeaux training center, “Liza” was not part of the club's big hopes. The reason? His size (1m69 today), deemed too small. An educator even made him understand that he would never pass professional because of his physique.
“The small side, too frail, obviously I had it violently at the Bordeaux Girondins but I had almost my whole life, because I was always the pitchoune as they say in the Basque Country. In the southwest, Pitchoune is the little one and I was always that for my friends “Said Lizarazu in the Podcast Winning Minds.
A major deficit that prompted him to make it ” more than others ». “” When I arrived at the Girondins training center, it's different because there, it's the elite already, he said. There are the best players who are recruited for the training center. I really struggled. I arrived at the age of 13 and between 13 and 15 years old, I was really physiologically late compared to others. »»
Lizarazu: “It was a fairly painful moment”
A physiological delay that could have precipitated the end of his career … ” And unfortunately, there is an educator who one day told me 'it is not even worth hoping to become a professional footballer. You don't have the capacity for that '. It was a first shock. My parents were there and it was a fairly painful moment. But it didn't slow me down “Ensured the native of Saint-Jean-de-Luz, now 55 years old.
Indeed, this forged a steel mind to him, essential for succeeding at the highest level. “” This is also the advantage when you have a defect, it is that you develop other qualities, he said. Whenever I played against bigger or stronger guys than me, I had only one idea in mind, it was to make them (laughs). In Germany in particular, the players were very large, and to tell me that the big one of 1.95m, we were going to find ourselves on contact … (smile). It remained like a kind of obsession, a match in the match, and therefore a permanent motivation. »»
