Paul Rouget, Media365: published on Tuesday December 24, 2024 at 10:29 p.m.
Selected for the first time in the French team last month, Lucas Chevalier, who never ceases to shine in the Lille goals, “gave something” from the age of 19, recalls Jérémie Janot, who launched him at Valenciennes.
He is one of the great men of this first part of the season. And not only in Ligue 1. If he shines with Lille in the championship, whose Mastiffs occupy fourth place at the break, Lucas Chevalier also showed his advantage in the Champions League, notably during the historic victory against the Real Madrid, a match in which he literally disgusted the attackers of the Merengue club.
And it is logical that he was selected for the very first time in the French team by Didier Deschamps last month, for the Nations League matches against Israel and Italy. Even if he did not play, the 23-year-old goalkeeper took great pride in it and made an appointment for the future. A trajectory not so surprising according to Jérémie Janot, then coach of the Valenciennes goalkeepers and who launched Chevalier among the professionals in Ligue 2 with the VAFC, to whom LOSC had loaned him so that he could become more experienced during the fiscal year 2021-2022.
“He was extraordinary”
Then aged 19, “he gave off something, an aura. He had something. I say all the time that it's true, he started with me in Valenciennes, but if he hadn't performed, he I would have had to change jobs. If we give you a Lucas Chevalier and you return Tartempion… You know what I mean, you have to change jobs,” explains Janot in the La Voix des Gardiens podcast.
And the coach of the Espoirs goalkeepers insisted on the state of mind of Lille. “What he did in the locker room at 19… He was on loan from Lille, and whether we stayed there or not, it didn't matter for him, he was going back to Lille whatever happened. But he had taken the “The mission of holding on, it was in his guts and he was extraordinary,” he recalls.
