He has always chosen secondary paths to follow his passion and remain free. Eccentric, never trendy, but always visionaryDidier Roustan (61 years old), Téléfoot star at 25 years old, today a columnist at Chaîne L'Équipe and the voice of football at RTL, talks about football with just as much passion, but with much more perspective.
'South West Sunday' How did football come into your life?
Didier Roustan I didn't really have a choice. I had a West Indian grandfather who was very present and crazy about football, a father from Marseille who played as an amateur, a professional uncle at AS Cannes and just friends who played ball. I grew up in Cannes, 200m from the Hespérides stadium, which was the professional stadium. So I was surrounded and quickly surrendered. And of course I played. For me, football was friends and fun. Turns out I was pretty good with the ball and played on the best teams in AS. Cannes. So much so that at 16 I was training with the professionals, under the orders of Robert Domergue. He had chosen three young men in whom he believed. But the more it progressed, the more painful it became for me, because there were too many constraints.
Friendship before the show?
This tough core of friends, who evolved together from schoolboys to cadets through juniors, was the meaning of my life. If a player on these teams calls me today at 4 in the morning because they need help, I come right away. Even though I haven't seen him in 20 years. The times mean that a young man today would kill his father and mother to be better than his partner, to be picked up by a professional club. I am in a constant competition. The tragedy is that at 15, these kids have an agent!
Why did you become a sports journalist?
I was so passionate about football that I knew many things, even at the international level. During the 1970 World Cup, I spent hours flipping through all the foreign newspapers, even though I didn't understand anything. I absorbed the names of all the players in the world and while playing with friends, I commented on the matches. When I saw Brazil play, it was more than just football! That gave me a strong thrill. My mother, who was a journalist, knew all this and suggested that I mix football and journalism.
Has the evolution of finance and marketing changed the level of football?
What distorts the data today is that there is a concentration of 80% of the best players in the world in ten clubs, and always in Europe. In fact, I find that the game has lost a lot of its freshness. Football has gone global and everyone plays the same! As South Americans and Africans leave home earlier and earlier, there is no longer any connection between the continents. Standardizing styles destroys many things. In addition, the Champions League vampirizes all competitions, with the same teams. I think eventually we will have one championship with the best teams in Europe, modeled after the NBA in the USA. PSG will no longer play at Guingamp…
However, football remains capable of bringing together the boss and the worker, the old and the young, on the same platform. For what?
The stadium is one of the rare places where some form of truth remains. The further we advance in life, the more we realize that everything is distorted, that everyone is lying, and that everything is communication. In football, everything stops. Even if two or three players are loaded like mules, we don't know… We are living a moment of truth, a snapshot. We'll be bored as dead rats at times, but in the 89th minute, there's the gesture that can make up for anything else. Everything is possible. Football is life, with the joys, the misfortunes, the good guys, the bad guys, the excesses, the injustices. It is a reflection of society. This attracts me, touches me and revolts me at the same time.
Is contemporary football the best ever played?
The overall level of play has undoubtedly risen, but today's Pelé or Cruyff, with the right workloads, would still be the best. They are geniuses and geniuses span ages. The quality of the ball and pitches has also increased significantly. In their day, when you were a creator, you were massacred. With the cameras, whoever breaks Messi's leg – like Maradona's – could stop football immediately! There are largely favorable conditions for artists today.