The shattered dreams of football hopes

By Robin Richardot

Posted today at 02:18

The start of the story was perfect. The course of one whose life revolved only around football seemed promising. At 6, Carl Delplanque joined ASPTT Nantes. At 11, he joined the pre-training center of FC Nantes (FCN), then his training center. “A benchmark in France and in Europe at the time. Everyone wanted to go ”, He says, hair held in a bun and forearms covered with tattoos, sitting on a Nantes terrace on the banks of the Loire. At 15, he refused the advances of Stade Brest, interested in this promising young midfielder.

In Nantes, his teammates at the time are now well known to football fans: Patrice Loko, Reynald Pedros, Christian Karembeu, all French champions a few years later with the FCN. The name of Delplanque, 47, does not mean anything to anyone. Because, at the end of five years of training, FC Nantes did not offer him any professional contract. Nor any other club despite some contacts which ultimately did not succeed. “When I was 20, I left the biggest training center and I couldn’t find a club, not even in Division 2.”

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Two years of unemployment followed and a difficult rebound in Montauban, in Division 4, before finally stopping football at the age of 21. Carl Delplanque becomes an educator and is deeply involved. “I had this constant need to prove to others that I could succeed elsewhere than in football”, he recounts. Appointed head of department at the Lamoricière Educational and Pedagogical Therapeutic Institute in Nantes, he worked seventy-hour weeks.

Carl Delplanque in the Marcel Saupin stadium, in which he played during his five years of training for the D3 and D4 teams, in Nantes, on October 6, 2021.

At 37, a victim of professional exhaustion, he was treated for two weeks in a psychiatric hospital, then two more weeks in a nursing home. He will stop working for six months. Today, Carl Delplanque is doing well. He nevertheless confides that, for nearly twenty years, his nights have been haunted by the same nightmare: “I am in the Nantes locker room. I see all my teammates entering the field and I hurry to get ready, but I am unable to tie my laces. The match starts without me. “

Psychological shock

Each year, in the forty or so French training centers, a majority of young footballers aged 15 to 19 see their dream of a professional career shattered. No precise figure is given by the authorities of French football, but the main players agree on an estimate: at least 80% of teenagers in training centers are not offered a professional contract when they leave. Some even speak of 90% or even more.

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