“I started at the back, and little by little I started to climb. At the beginning, the goal and me, it was complicated. » If it refers here to its positioning on a football field, the sentence sums up well the trajectory of the discreet Marie-Antoinette Katoto. After years spent in withdrawal, the center-forward of the French women’s football team is slowly but surely taking its share of light in the selection. “I am very reserved in life, and on the pitch too, especially when I was young”she acknowledges.
In club, his rise is nevertheless dazzling, and the figures dizzying. The Paris-Saint-Germain (PSG) striker is already the top scorer in club history at just 23 years old. At the Euro, which began on July 6 in England, it is the main offensive force of the Blue. Corinne Deacon confirms it, she who is usually more balanced about her players. “Marie is today naturally the number one striker of the France team”, advanced the coach during the presentation of her list for Euro 2022, on May 30. Sunday, July 10, for the first match of the Blue in the competition, against Italy (5-1 victory), she scored her twenty-sixth goal in thirty-one selections.
If a lot of hopes are placed in her, we would almost forget that “MAK” arrives across the Channel in the skin of a neophyte, because she has never yet tasted the thrills of an international final phase with the French team. Her non-selection for the 2019 World Cup, which was being played in France, had caused a lot of talk, some observers already seeing in her the “Feminine Mbappé”.
Like the 2018 world champion from Bondy (Seine-Saint-Denis), the striker born in Colombes (Hauts-de-Seine) is from the Ile-de-France and lives only for the round ball. She gives a glimpse of her younger years: “It was the school opposite, the field next door and nothing else. I played soccer all the time downstairs. » Like Kylian Mbappé, she defends the colors of the capital club and stands out for her precocity. She saw her baptism of fire at just 16, during a Champions League semi-final with Paris, against Wolfsburg, in April 2015.
In the name of the Father
Once these common points are stated, the young woman of 1.77 m is the antithesis of her counterpart. The number 10 of the Blues was already at the top of the bill from an early age and even trained to answer questions from journalists. Rather stingy with words, “MAK” prefers to dodge the microphones. “For me, football was just fun”she recalled at the microphone of “Téléfoot” on June 12.
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