Cocorico, the Blues are European champions! Not those of Kylian Mbappé and Didier Deschamps, at least not yet. But those of Lukas Labat and the French football team are deaf. The 18-year-old Mons goalkeeper raised the 1is June the trophy in Antalya, Türkiye.
A few weeks after playing his first Champions League for the Deaf with Vitry, being on loan from the Bordeaux Sports Association of the Deaf, and having played in parallel with the seniors of the Etoile sportif Monoise… Yes, we have to follow. He has a series of experiences and seems to adapt almost everywhere.
“Lukas, he amazes me,” sums up the co-president of ES Montoise Didier Robino. The club is full of praise for its goalkeeper and employee. The boy is not a professional footballer, no. But he is doing a civic service within the club which ends on August 31. Before perhaps continuing the adventure under a contract of another form. Another stone on the path that unites Lukas Labat and ES Montoise.
Second dad
He started there at 4 years old, experienced all the youth categories, his repositioning as a doorman, the transition to a helmet, due to an ear malformation, like Petr Cech – even if he cites Salvatore more easily Sirigu as a model – which earned him some mockery at the start. “They told me change sports, we’re not playing rugby. It was not easy. But now I don’t care, I put it on! »
It was at ESM that he was taken under his wing by Christian Letourneux, goalkeeper coach at ES Montoise and sports studies at Despiau, who Lukas followed for two years, becoming like a second dad. The coach knows almost everything about the young man, how to best communicate with him on the pitch, his complicated family context, his mother who carries him at arm’s length. It was he who went out of his way to find a sports team suitable for the boy.
New world
“He was on Facebook and came across a post from a hearing-impaired goalkeeper from the France team. He told me “he’s lucky”. And I wondered why Lukas wouldn’t also have a little luck,” smiles Christian Letourneux. So the coach contacted the Landes Football District, who referred him to the disabled sports manager, who gave him the number of a club in Bordeaux, the Bordeaux Sports Association of the Deaf (ASSBB), Lukas Labat’s first adapted club. .
“I can play it in parallel because the licenses are not taken from the same Federation. At ES Montoise, it is an FFF license; in Bordeaux, it is with the French Handisport Federation,” specifies the person concerned.
“The rules are the same, simply, with the deaf, we have to remove the devices, like that everyone is at the same level. The central referee has a touchline flag and waves it at each foul, continues Lukas Labat. And I have less pressure than with the Étoile, where I am always afraid of not being understood when I speak to my teammates. Even if they try to reassure me about that.”
The ASSBB also allows the young man to make a name for himself in the world of French deaf football, where goalkeepers are also particularly in demand. Quite quickly, he was loaned to ES Vitry to play nothing other than the Champions League, in Greece. “I discovered a new team, new players, I experienced my first big trip to Athens. Unfortunately, we finished 9e out of 12 but we had a lot of fun! And we fulfilled the objective of coming back with a victory.
” It’s rare “
Almost immediately after this continental discovery, a first selection for the French deaf team, for the European Championship in Turkey. And this time the final victory, at the end of an unbearable overtime.
“European champion is rare, especially in my first year in the deaf world. From my first year I made the French team, European champion, I couldn’t ask for anything else. It was exceptional despite the not easy conditions we had,” recalls the goalkeeper, mentioning that all the teams, Turkish included, were decimated by illness. Lukas himself was deprived of a good part of the competition.
The boy has in any case grown up at high speed this season. And he intends to continue. With ES Montoise, where he wants to impose himself with the A in R2. But also with the French deaf team. In order to perhaps bring back a new gold medal, at the Deaflympics (Olympic Games for the deaf) in November 2025.
