He is considered, by choice, as “the Messi” or “the Zidane” of blind football. Immense since the beginning of the competition, Frédéric Villeroux once again excelled to guide the French team to a historic victory at the Paralympic Games in Paris on Saturday. First author of the opening score in the final against Argentina, it was he who scored the decisive penalty, at the end of the suspense, in an incandescent atmosphere at the foot of the Eiffel Tower (1-1, 3-2 tab).
“It’s a huge emotion. Plus, I’m not a penalty taker, I prefer to drive the ball and shoot on the move. But the coach (Toussaint Akpweh) told me: ‘You’re captain, you’re going to take the third penalty.’ I had a lot of doubts, I felt alone. I told myself that I had two choices, either shoot with a left-footed kick, or a pointy shot at random. I went for a safer bet with the left-footed kick and it worked,” confided the 41-year-old from Bordeaux a few minutes after the French team’s triumph.
Since blind football entered the Paralympic Games in 2004 in Athens, all the titles had been won by Brazil. At home, France has therefore become only the second nation to have its name on the list of winners in six editions.
“We secretly dreamed about it”
“The coach dreamed of this medal. He knew how to bring us into his dream. We started to believe in it when we beat the Chinese, the vice-world champions (in the group stage)! It was huge. We are here thanks to our victory against China. We dreamed about it in secret, for us we were weaker than the others, we are amateurs while the others are professionals. But we knew that we could do something with the public. But to go and win the gold medal… We have made a dream come true, we beat Argentina who are world champions. We can’t go any higher, it’s great!”, savored Villeroux, very touched by the support of the public.
“We’ve never experienced that in blind football. Usually, we can play in front of a maximum of 80 people. Here we played in front of 12,000 people! We have to continue to work to bring in new blood, make way for the youngsters!”, he smiled. Asked about his personal situation, he who is unanimously presented as one of the best players in the world, Villeroux preferred as always to play as a team. With class and humility.
“If Alessandro (Bartolomucci, the goalkeeper) is not there, we are not gold medallists,” he recalled. “Everyone does their job. We have to thank everyone. It’s not because you score a lot of goals that you are the best player in the world. You have to know how to make technical defensive moves, run everywhere, it doesn’t stop at scoring goals. That’s what I regret a little in classic football, we only celebrate the scorers. Football is a whole, it’s teamwork, we can’t just put one person in the spotlight.” The message got through.
- RMC Sport
