Until he was 15, Andy Delort loved to go to the games of Sète, his hometown. A tradition that takes place every year at the end of August and during which men compete on boats with the aim of knocking the other down in the water. This festival brings together several thousand people for nearly a week. The youngster from the northern quarters was also having fun playing over the water.
Little Delort was then far from imagining that, almost a decade later, he would be used to the weekly contests of Ligue 1, in front of thousands of spectators as well. The next will be played against Montpellier, his club of hearts, where he scored forty goals in 106 league games, and which he left in August 2021 to join Nice, against compensation of around 10 million euros.
To forgive without ever forgetting is to grow up without resentment. 106 matches, 40 goals in L1, 21 assists. 7 goals … https://t.co/VZVn5M07d9
“We are disappointed because nobody expected it. He had started the season with us and he had made statements about his dedication and his captaincy. It was the local kid who represented the club in its beating mentality. We would have lived it better if it had happened before the resumption. The club had made him its base player for the season, he got us in trouble ”, plague even today Bernard Soccoro, the founder of the Central Club, the oldest group of Montpellier supporters.
On March 6, 2020, the center forward declared in the columns of Midi-Free : “I want to write my name here, going down in history would be wonderful. I only think of Montpellier where I hope to end my career. ”
After Montpellier, Delort also routs Algeria
Between the Sétoise youth and Montpellier will follow one another nearly ten clubs, with particular experiences in Mexico and England. André Oliva, his coach at FC Sète when Delort was 10, remembers a player above the rest:
“I understood that if we managed to channel him with a good entourage, he would go far. He was passionate about football, he arrived half an hour before the others in training. He was not a pure technician, but he had a phenomenal strike. He was already a goal hunter with great physical potential. ”
But the player whose André Oliva emphasizes “The superb state of mind and the enormous heart off the pitch” sometimes lends itself to criticism, in Montpellier but also on the other side of the Mediterranean. In 2019, he undertook the administrative procedures to obtain Algerian nationality, he who has Maghrebian origins through his mother. His naturalization will allow him to compete in the African Cup the same year and to win it. But here again, the one that Algerian supporters affectionately nickname “sheep’s head” takes a new 360-degree turn.
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