85
Daily Mail, Friday, August 30, 2019
Football
Ndombele and Pepe grew up 15 miles apart
in the banlieues of Paris. On Sunday they will
meet in the heat of the North London derby
T
HE French shadow
cast over Sunday’s
north London derby
looms large.
As travellers queued this
week to board the Eurostar from Lon-
don, a customs officer was busy check-
ing passports. His name? ‘M Guen-
douzi’. Sadly for him, his midfield
namesake, Arsenal’s Matteo Guen-
douzi, has kept more of his hair.
The road from the gritty suburbs of
Paris — known as the banlieues — to
football superstardom is well travelled.
Kylian Mbappe, Paul Pogba and N’Golo
Kante are among those to battle their
way out of the land of high-rise build-
ings and low opportunity.
This season, two more players who
grew up 15 miles apart are looking to
make their mark on these shores.
Tanguy Ndombele and Nicolas Pepe
cost a combined £137million this summer.
They moved to north London, the most
expensive signings in the history of
Tottenham and Arsenal.
But how did they get here? And how
do the areas around Paris continue to
produce so many diamonds?THIS summer, the Ndombele family
have been toasting two new arrivals.
A month after Tanguy sealed his £65m
move to Spurs, older brother Bosso cel-
ebrated the birth of his second son.
Isiah is only three weeks old but already
— as Sportsmail discov-
ered when we visited
the Ndbombele home
— his early days have
been immortalised in a
photograph at his
grandmother’s flat.
The picture shows
Isiah and his older
brother Aidan who,
aged two, is used to
having a ball at his feet.from the city centre. Here, they
live in splendid isolation. ‘His
roots are in the Cité (estate)...
but here no one knows Tanguy,’
Blandine says. ‘Even the neigh-
bours don’t know who he is.’
That’s just how the ‘reserved’
midfielder likes it. Ndombele’s
pleasures are simple — cards,
mobile game Candy Crush, FIFA
— but his route to north London
has been bumpier than most. As a
teenager he was rejected by sev-
eral clubs and struggled with his
weight. ‘He ate everything,’ his
sister remembers.
When he returns to France,
Ndombele still enjoys the tastes
of home, such as pondu (crushed
cassava leaves) with rice, a favour-
ite of his parents’ native Congo.
‘When he was at Lyon and I went
to see him, I would take Pondu
and when I go to England I will
take him Pondu,’ his mum
smiles.
Having whipped himself into
shape, Ndombele got his break at
Ligue 1 side Amiens and now, less
than three years after signing his
first professional contract, he’s aFrance international. At the heart
of this success, his family believe,
is a strong religious faith. Our
interview began with a prayer
and ended with a trip to church.
On Sunday, though, the family
will watch the derby. Ndombele
has a thigh injury but if he is fit,
Bosso will be in London, support-
ing his brother and collecting his
match shirt. Soon that could be
another framed memory fighting
for space back home.AT Paris’s north-eastern tip a
group of boys are playing at the
Jules Ladoumegue sports centre.
This is the home of Paris
Solitaires-Est and of Nicolas Pepe,
the latest in a long line of French-
born players to wear Arsenal red.
The winger, who signed for £72m
this summer, played for Solitaires
for nearly a decade. Ex-Spurs
midfielder Georges-Kevin Nkoudou
and Birmingham defender Cheick
Keita were team-mates. They still
come back for an occasional kick
about, too. It looks different now.
Artificial grass has replaced the‘rocky’ surfaces of yesteryear.
Pepe is different, too. Back then
he was a goalkeeper, battling for a
place with Yosry Braik.
‘Pepe was awesome as a goal-
keeper, he had this ability to know
what the striker was going to
do because he was a striker also
inside him,’ Braik says.
Pepe and Braik were team-
mates until their early teens,
when Pepe moved to Poitiers in
western France and his career as
a forward took off. He represents
the country of his parents’ birth,
the Ivory Coast, and has 16 caps.
‘When we heard that Pepe had
found Angers, a professional club,
we were surprised because there
were so many good players but he
wasn’t the kind to say what he
was doing,’ Braik remembers.
‘He did his stuff in the shadows.
He worked a lot, a lot, a lot and
he got what he deserved.’
A decade has passed since Pepe
left Paris but he has not forgotten
his roots. He still wears No 19, the
district where he grew up. The
barber shop in Reims that he part
owns is called 19, too. ‘In this partof France we have a lot of talent,’
Braik adds. ‘There is a lot of com-
petition. Just here in this stadium
we have four different clubs.
‘Football is our only exit gate if
you want to succeed in your life.
Coming from this district, the
19th, you’re hungry... families here
don’t have a lot of money but they
have what they need to live. The
local government helped us have
a lot of activities.’
Indirectly, Pepe, 24, is doing his
bit, too. FIFA solidarity payments
see five per cent of international
transfer fees paid to those clubs
who trained the player between
12 and 23, Solitaires are entitled
to around £360,000.
‘The stadium was really poor,’
Braik recalls. ‘As kids we used to
play on rock pitches. So that’s
why Pepe, me and the other
goalkeepers used to play in full
trousers. The club were able to
give us pants with protective
(padding) so we could throw
ourselves to get the ball.’
The pitches are unrecognisable
now. Like Pepe — and Ndombele
— they have come a long way.STARS SUBURBS
OF THE
SPECIAL
REPORT
Daniel
Matthews
in Parisyfrom the city centre Here t of France we have a lot of talent,’
B ik dd ‘Th i ltfHe’s in good company.
Dwarfing the photo-
graph are two cabinets,
filled with trophies won
by Bosso, Tanguy and
younger brother Daniel,- Lyon and France
shirts hang nearby, with
Tottenham mugs and London
shot glasses the commemoration
for Tanguy’s latest move.
‘When he was very small, he
began playing at home,’ Tanguy’s
mum Blandine says. ‘He would be
the players, referee, journalist,
commentator... For Tanguy,
football was life. At four years old
he already knew team names.
‘Argentina! Holland! We would
ask, “Can you read the names?”
But no it was the flags. That was
his passion for football.’
To this day the three brothers
remain extremely close.
Daniel lives with Tanguy, 22, in
London, Bosso still plays for
nearby Linas-Montlhery, the club
Tanguy joined as a teenager after
leaving Epinay Athletico.
The brothers, and sister
Annette, grew up in an eight-
storey apartment block in
Epinay-sous-Senart, just south of
Paris. These days the family live
in Ballainvilliers, a more leafy
commune about 13 miles south
west of the capital.
It is a train and bus ride out
Roots: Ndombele (left) and his proud mother Blandine back home (inset);
Pepe (right) and (inset) former goalkeeping rival Yosry Braik GETTY IMAGES