On Sundays in a gymnasium in Rueil-Malmaison, a suburb west of Paris, Mehdi Salem used to play indoor street football tournaments with the local neighbourhood teams.
He recalls one 14-year-old, playing for his district Geraniums, dribbling past one, two, then three players and scoring a brilliant goal in one game. “We lifted him in the air like a king,” recalls Salem, speaking to The Athletic on the train to Leipzig where France play their second group game against the Netherlands on Friday. He was the “Chouchou”, as they say in French. The favourite.
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His name was N’Golo Kante.
Some questioned the midfielder’s surprise inclusion in Didier Deschamps’ 25-man squad for Euro 2024. The 33-year-old had not played for France for two years. Last season, he made 44 appearances in Saudi Arabia for Al Ittihad, who finished fifth in a relatively inferior league, having joined from Chelsea in June 2023.
His last season in the Premier League side had been marred by a serious hamstring injury which kept him out for the majority of the campaign.
But, some 733 days after his previous cap, Deschamps started Kante in both of France’s pre-tournament friendlies. In their 1-0 opening game win against Austria, the midfielder was awarded man of the match.
“Just look at what he’s done; that’s why I brought him,” said Deschamps, who was “convinced” the team would be better with him. “We can discuss the specific intensity in Saudi Arabia, but he played 4,000 minutes.
“He’s tactically intelligent, has the ability to recover and get forward. He was brilliant today, and so much the better because that’s what we needed. He was radiant.”
His France team-mates have been effusive about him in recent weeks. “He hasn’t changed,” said Olivier Giroud. Benjamin Pavard described him as “incredible, still as strong as ever”.
“It feels like three players — it’s horrible,” Marcus Thuram said about coming up against Kante in training.
“He never complains, never baulks at the task,” said Adrien Rabiot. “He’s in great shape.”
Kante is the same player as 20 years ago.
“He was very quick — you didn’t have time to pass the ball,” says Guillaume Levassor, who, along with Salem, played with Kante in the under-18s at Suresnes, a club in the district of Hauts-de-Seine, Paris. “When you received the ball, he was on you straight away.”
The duo, three years Kante’s senior, were used to playing with and against young boys with the potential to represent a side above their age group. But Kante was “special”.
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“He never lost the ball… always running,” says Salem, who took the bus to Les Bons Raisins school with him every day. “We could see he was a cut above the rest. He was very shy, humble, respectful. Always smiling.”
Ever the professional, Kante did not join the older players when they started going out to socialise. “He went quietly about his business,” says Salem. “He was always very focused — a real football fanatic.”
Even his captain acknowledged seeing the World Cup winner back in the national team was a surprise.
“There was a certain amount of uncertainty when he arrived,” Kylian Mbappe told Ouest-France. But after a couple of training sessions, Kante “swept away all doubts”. “He hasn’t lost a thing. He has a thousand lungs.”
That was evident when, against Austria, Kante made a lung-busting recovery run to nick the ball off Patrick Wimmer, preventing the potential concession of a late equaliser.
He was France’s midfield metronome, forever scuttling from box to box. According to UEFA’s statistics, he ran the furthest (11.8km) of any French player. For context, according to FIFA’s figures, he ran an average of 10.4km per game in the three group games as a 27-year-old at the 2018 World Cup in Russia.
He also hit a top speed of 34.5kmph in Dusseldorf on Monday, making him the eighth fastest player at the tournament after the first round of games. Of his team-mates, only Mbappe was marginally quicker at 35.2kmph.
That athleticism, according to former team-mate Remy Vercoutre, is how the quiet 22-year-old Kante earned players’ respect when he moved from Suresnes via Boulogne to Caen.
One summer during Ramadan, when temperatures reached above 30C (86F), Kante got up at 4am to eat breakfast and would fast until 10pm. He never missed one of the three daily sessions, never complained and always ignored coach Patrice Garande’s suggestions to rest. And yet he would still finish first in the training exercises.
“When a player gives so much of himself, he wins your heart and the heart of the team,” Vercoutre told L’Equipe.
That was also true for his title-winning season at Leicester, having moved from Caen in 2015.
“As good as he was technically, defensively and the work he did, it came with him being such a fantastic person,” the Frenchman’s former Leicester team-mate Marc Albrighton tells The Athletic. “Nobody in the world will have a bad word to say about him. If I made a mistake, he was there. You always felt you had backup. He was very much a team player. He was so unselfish.
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“N’Golo just took it by storm. Everything about him… no one could believe how he adapted to every situation he faced, how much work he did, the ground he covered. We were all gobsmacked by it all.
“He was friends with Riyad Mahrez and they used to play little one-on-ones in the gym, with tiny little goals, and everyone would stop and watch them. The skill they showed and the way N’Golo defended… it was great to watch.
“No one teased him for driving a little mini. Everyone just thought: ‘Yeah, it’s N’Golo. It suits him’.”
What impresses Mbappe the most, though, is not how much he runs but the fact he runs “intelligently”.
“I’ve known players who run a lot, but they don’t recover as many balls,” he says. “He knows how to position himself, anticipate and read the game. He’s always been like that, but he’s got better over time. This quality has become his speciality. I’m convinced he’s going to have a great tournament.”
Kante suggested as much against Austria. His performance was reminiscent of his time at Chelsea, where he flourished alongside Nemanja Matic in arguably their best team, doing the job of two players in Antonio Conte’s midfield en route to winning another Premier League in 2016-17.
He had the second-most touches of any France player (73) behind Jules Kounde (77) and only William Saliba won possession more times (five) in the defensive third than Kante (four).
He turned out of trouble, linking play wide to Theo Hernandez, pinging balls to Ousmane Dembele here, a neat pass to Rabiot there, then interchanging with Mbappe. There was even a sudden burst down the right wing, which Antoine Griezmann — jokingly — suggested he was far from happy with.
“When I saw him doing that, I thought to myself: ‘Something’s not right here,'” said the forward. But Kante has always possessed that ability to surprise.
Despite his small stature, Kante blocked crosses and made important defensive clearances in his own box.
There were some nervy moments when Austria went man for man in midfield on Kante and Rabiot, or on one occasion when Kante and Saliba were forced very deep towards their own byline. But they played their way out of trouble, eventually winning a goal kick.
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The former France captain Hugo Lloris, far from surprised that Kante can conjure such brilliance despite playing outside an elite European league, has described him as “an angel protecting the team”.
After the Austria game, Kante admitted in his softly spoken voice that he had been a bit “apprehensive” ahead of his return to the national setup but added it was a “reward” and a “pleasure” to be back.
When Kante was crowned a world champion in 2018, he was flanked by leaders such as Lloris, Raphael Varane and Paul Pogba — figures who are no longer in the team. But when Mbappe was forced off with a bloodied nose in the 89th minute of France’s first game, he gave the armband to Kante. It was the first time he had ever worn it.
“I wasn’t expecting it,” he says. “It was an honour, it means a lot and something to be proud of.”
Kante, a very reserved, unassuming character, prefers to let his feet do the talking. “He’s a leader on the ground; he leads by example,” said his midfield partner, Rabiot. “Sometimes, it is worth more than words.”
Despite his quiet, endearing nature, do not underestimate Kante’s competitiveness. He likes playing games in camp — whether cards, Connect Four, basketball or on the console — and would stay up late to make sure he won. His team-mates have joked that, even when he is cheating at cards, he does so with a smile.
“You don’t think he’s like that, but he’ll do anything to win,” said Mbappe. “It’s surprising because he’s the perfect little angel. But when you think about it, that’s the mark of a champion. No matter their personality, there is this constant will to win.”
Indeed, the initial fans’ chant — “Il est petit (he is small), il est gentil, (he is kind) il a bouffe Leo Messi (he ate Leo Messi) bientôt sur les Champs-Elysees (soon on les Champs-Elysees)”, anticipating their victory parade back in Paris — that was taken up en route to the team winning the World Cup was changed to include a line on him cheating at cards.
But that is the only time Kante blots his copy book. Always smiling, always positive, his presence is good for team morale. Even when he was called in for doping control after France beat Croatia 4-2 in the 2018 World Cup final, Kante never complained.
Kante and Pogba were France’s double pivot when they won that tournament six years ago — the diminutive midfielder featured in all seven games — but both had to withdraw from the 2022 World Cup because of injury.
In that tournament, Aurelien Tchouameni and Rabiot formed a relatively inexperienced midfield partnership. Yet Tchouameni, a wonderful young talent, has been sidelined with a foot injury since May, which opened the door to Kante.
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The veteran has played with Rabiot 16 times over the past seven years. Against Austria, Deschamps instructed the duo not to venture too far forward after winning the ball, but to focus on feeding the forward line.
“I like to get forward, but the coach asks us to play fairly safe,” said Rabiot. “With Kante, the tasks were well distributed and we were efficient in the recovery.”
There was promise in that partnership in Dusseldorf. It will be reprised in Leipzig against the Dutch, a team who are expected to pose a far greater threat.
Kante still visits his hometown Rueil-Malmaison, where his family live, and pays attention to the area’s young aspiring footballers. He stays discreet and close to his roots.
“That’s the beauty of it too, compared to the players we see today,” adds Salem. “He doesn’t forget his people. He’s a local figure. He’s stayed the same.
“He’s the best — a real gem.”
And he is still a force in France’s midfield.
(Top photo: Marvin Ibo Guengoer – GES Sportfoto/Getty Images)