At the time of his loan to ASSE from the Braga reserve, Yvan Neyou drew some mockery. Some have seen in Cameroon a pistonné of Claude Puel. Unfair and reductive.
With Claude Puel, the bulk of the problems often come when the Castrese makes his family work. In Lyon, the arrival of his sons Grégoire and Paulin at the training center had made some educators talk. Not strong enough for OL? Forced to be aligned so as not to offend the coach? They were several to think so. Much to the chagrin of Grégoire, a winger for the CFA2 team who fought in vain against “preconceptions” and to convince his partners to the contrary. In Nice, repeated again. Grégoire starts off as a professional right-back, Paulin is there and the Ultras don’t like it. To avoid a cabal, the management of the Gym decides to make Gregory leave against Claude’s advice, causing an injury that never healed. The Castres are stubborn and we do not touch his family.
In Saint-Etienne, Claude Puel’s “cleavage mania” no longer consists in wanting Grégoire at his side. The offspring, vaccinated from the galleys with his father, leads his own career. Today, it is his daughter Charlene who is the indirect cause of the reproaches made to the Puel clan … via his companion Tom Calvet, player agent behind the arrival of Yvan Neyou to the Greens. With this information, already a first pressure for the Cameroonian. That of a player presented as not sized for ASSE and only there thanks to a “piston stroke” from someone whispering in Claude Puel’s ear. The detractors of the Saint-Etienne general manager have nothing to do with whether Yvan Neyou is good or not, if his profile corresponds to a void in the workforce. They do not want to know that Tom Clavet did not receive any commission to bring him there and that the signing of Neyou does not weigh anything on the finances (a loan with OA of 400,000 € for a salary of 12,000 € per month, almost a professional footballer’s minimum wage). For the anti-Puel, Neyou will be judged harder than the others and his less successful shots will be potential attacks on the ubiquitous general manager of the Greens.
“Behind the shadow of Puel’s son-in-law, a real footballer”
While still wanting to learn more about Yvan Neyou without going to the easy (and hateful) shortcuts that sometimes turn, I contacted the northerner Colbert Marlot. For those who do not know who Colbert Marlot is, he is the man who launched Neyou in Sedan … And incidentally a great French trainer, passed through Lens and who has notably seen the maturing of talents such as Raphaël Varane, Geoffrey Kondogbia , Gaël Kakuta or even Jeff Reine-Adélaïde (just that). The man is frank and he still knows more than a common bar pillar when it comes to youth and potential. And when he spoke to me about Yvan Neyou, Colbert’s words lit up.
He portrayed me as a very technical player, able to get out of complicated situations but who simply lacked the physical volume to break through at the highest level at 18-20 years old. For him, Neyou, at 23 years old and with a higher physical volume, clearly not a task in the squad of AS Saint-Etienne. Already an objective counter-testimony in the image of the “swashbuckler” that certain ominous birds were selling. Yes, we can not succeed in a club (Braga) and in a context then break the house elsewhere. It’s not unique in the history of football. Others like Mathieu Valbuena or Franck Ribéry have done it. Yvan Neyou already had potential. We don’t do the INF Clairefontaine by chance either.
“Do not fall into the opposite excess either …”
No, Yvan Neyou is not a Sunday footballer who parachuted into the Greens by chance. But it’s also not the “find of the year” for taking the opposite excess. I like humility in his speech. The Cameroonian is coming out of nowhere and he knows he hasn’t done anything big in the history of ASSE yet. Maybe in a few years, Yvan Neyou will have brought as much to the club as a Blaise Matuidi … This kind of thing, we see it over time, with regularity in performance.
Like many, I found him interesting against PSG. I even saw him some similarities in the game (and on his scale) with Marco Verratti. In the middle he wasn’t the toughest but I liked his ease of playing forward and cleaning the balls. From there to ignite and cry genius? Not yet. If there is one thing we learned from the thunderous beginnings of Assane Dioussé (against Nice) and Osama Tannane in Forez, it is that recklessness and initial promises do not necessarily rhyme with tomorrow. who sing …
