Many of France’s players are on familiar ground against Morocco in the World Cup semi-final – but that is far from the case for Youssouf Fofana.
Didier Deschamps' side are aiming to reach back-to-back World Cup finals on Wednesday night and book a place in Sunday’s final against Argentina. Players like Hugo Lloris, Raphael Varane, Antoine Griezmann, Olivier Giroud and Kylian Mbappe have therefore been there and done it before.
Not so for Fofana, who has come into the starting line-up after Adrien Rabiot was ruled out through illness. The Monaco midfielder won his first France cap in September and will pick up just his seventh against Morocco.
Speaking in September, he thought he had little chance of even making it to Qatar. "It's very hard to imagine for a player who has never been called up," he told the Ligue 1 website. "I'd need to be very lucky, I think. But personally, I want to go as far as possible.”
Fofana did make the 25-man squad, with injuries to Paul Pogba, N'Golo Kante and Christopher Nkunku helping him sneak in. The 23-year-old hasn’t just been there to make up the numbers, either: Fofana has played four times so far.
It is the culmination of quite the journey for the young midfielder. Growing up in Paris’ 19th arrondissement, his talent was identified early and led to his attendance at the prestigious Clairefontaine academy.
However, he left Clairefontaine without an offer and ended up playing amateur football for Drancy, a side in Paris' northeast suburbs. "It's a hammer blow when you return to the amateur game, and you return to 'normal life'," Fofana explained in September.
"You have to find yourself a school… before that, the bus just dropped me off in front of the school. It's really hard to bounce back from such a failure – and for me it was a failure. I started to ask myself, 'why should I bother?'. Some people are cut out for this, some aren't. Maybe it's not for me."
It was during this time that Fofana had to take a job delivering pizzas to make ends meet.
“That was the best way to earn money and also to follow my dreams,” he explained before the quarter-final against England on Saturday.
Fofana became so disillusioned that he decided to stop pursuing football and instead focus on studying. It was only when he joined Strasbourg's youth academy in 2017 that things began to change.
After working his way up from the reserve side, he eventually progressed enough that Monaco came calling. He joined the Ligue 1 side for €15million in 2020 and formed a brilliant partnership with Aurelien Tchouaméni, who has since moved onto Real Madrid, but will play alongside him against Morocco on Wednesday.
