Marko Gazzotti bursts the screen with the France U20 team which will play this Friday the final of the U20 World Cup against Ireland in South Africa (7 p.m. French time). A trophy that France wants to keep after its successes in 2018 and 2019. RMC Sport went to meet the people who saw him grow up in Aix-les-Bains and then emerge at FC Grenoble. Reporting.
“Note Marko, with a K”: Sinilga (call her Sini) Gazzotti hesitates to deliver this precision. But she insists all the same, in her small voice, embellished with a remnant of accent, coming from the East which betrays the importance of spelling. He indeed signs the double culture of the offspring: “With his dad (Frédéric), when we decided on the first name, I asked to put this “touch” which brings me back to my origins, because at home, the “C” is written “K”. At home, it is Lithuania, the Baltic country that she left in 1999 to study in France, even if she calls herself Savoyard. “I spent half of my life in this region, here in Aix-les-Bains”, she explains.
Francophile (“I learned the language at school because I wanted to travel”) then French-speaking (“I did a year as an au pair in Corsica”), Sini Pétrauskaïté by her maiden name obtained a BTS d commercial action at the University of Savoie with, in parallel, a return to her passion, handball, a discipline in which she “played in all positions, except goalkeeper”, she smiles.
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Rugby thanks to his father, the desire to play thanks to his mother
Five years after her arrival in France, she gave birth to Marko on September 24, 2004, who inherited the family “sports” genes: the father registered him where he played a few years earlier, at the Football Club Aix-les-Bains ( FCA), the city’s rugby club for more than 120 years; and the mother bequeaths to him her irrepressible desire to play: “He is always on time, determined, disciplined, a treat to have in his group and a gold mine of good times, testifies Bernard Janin, one of his educators at the rugby school he attended from the age of 5 to 14 on the grounds laid out on the racecourse in the spa town. He is a model of its kind.” Sini completes: “One day, I take him to the stadium and his educators cancel at the last moment, because it is snowing. He wants to go on the field, but no one is there to supervise! He is inconsolable all after -noon.”
A friend of the couple, Laurent Cavaillé, president of the club summarizes: “His father brought him to rugby and his mother transmitted to him the values of the high level, because to win, she who landed from Lithuania in Savoie, this was not easy every day in his integration. He undeniably has his strength of character.” And his hatred of failure: “In U8 and U10, a failed tackle puts him in a mad rage”, says Laurent Cavaillé again.
Laurent Vialettes, boss of the rugby school is enthusiastic: “It’s a diamond that I’m going to see in tournaments, he walks around, crosses the whole field. He is clearly above the others with speed and explosiveness. which I have seldom seen.” The very fresh memories – he remains a member of the club from 2010 to 2019 – are however already colored with “legendary” hues on the shores of Lake Bourget but Franck Corrihons, the boss of the training center of his other “Football Club”, that of Grenoble rugby tempers: “He is not “stratospheric” either, cuts the ex-back and manager of the FCG. Yes, our detection unit on the Alpine furrow – the two Savoies and the Isère – spots him and brings him in. We knew he was going to play, but from there to rock the house… I would not have put my hand to cut that in two years, he arrives at this level, especially since there is always, at this age questions about his adaptation: he leaves his family for a boarding school; he goes from two sessions a week to six…”
“He does everything 200%”
To which, you add for Marko Gazzotti, as for all his 2004 generation which integrates the famous Grenoble formation – 14 players play in the Top 14 this season – a small virus which grips everyone: the Covid. Its procession of confinements, barrier gestures and social distancing complicates everything! Franck Corrihons rewinds: “His first year at Crabos, he only played two matches. Then, for 18 months, he multiplied individual and physical sessions.” After an almost white period between 2020 and 2021 in the post-covid-19 period, now follows an avalanche of matches, with an addition that compiles all the junior matches at the Six Nations Tournament with France, without forgetting the Espoirs and a few game sheets in Pro D2.
In the end, like a welcome resilience, the young Savoyard feeds on this global adversity, muscles his body and his game: “He is so self-determined, he knows so much where he wants to go. He has all this in his eyes so much that ‘he’s skipping the steps now, clearly.” A trajectory marked with the “family” seal: “He does everything 200%, smiles Sini, the mother. He is like me, I believe. I wanted to succeed in France at all costs, so I always did everything to get there And I believe it worked…”
For him too and without fuss: “After the semi-final won against the English, when I have him on the phone, I ask him because it really intrigues me: “Tell Marko, why don’t I see you on the videos of joy in the locker room. Where are you?” He replies: “I don’t care about that, it’s the field, it’s playing and winning that interests me.” That’s all Marko, discretion and action first. It’s a bit like me too…”
He can still improve on his passes
And the other ingredients of the recipe? “He is more “dry” at the time than now but he is already not afraid: he tackles, gets up, once, twice, three times in the same action. He never has the handbrake “slips Bernard Janin. “He grows as he climbs a step, which ultimately is never too high. He adapts immediately thanks to this dominant physique”, continues Franck Corrihons. “Since he can’t stand being second, he does everything to impose himself and be at the level of the others”, judge Laurent Cavaillé.
Without forgetting his eyes which draw his ambition: “At first glance, it is “cold” with his dark gaze, you have to look for it a little, describes Franck Corrihons. He is straight, honest, honest in his involvement in the work. But he gives a lot, a lot, a lot…” Perhaps too much? “If he wants to have a long career, he has to spare himself a bit.” And work on his weak point spotted at rugby school: “Technically, he does not have a monstrous pass,” recalls Bernard Janin. “Especially his left-handed pass and his melee outings,” adds Franck Corrihons.
But for the rest, it does not change anything. Moreover, it does not change anything: “Faced with England, I saw him do what he did with me, especially in his last year of U14, remembers Bernard Janin. Since he refuses to back down, the opponents try to “annoy him”. But he doesn’t freak out. On the other hand, on the next tackle, he adjusts it more powerfully. He thus sends a message in the rules of the art.” And he plays the policeman: “Facing the English, he did it as he did in one of our matches”, notes the Savoyard educator.
In the sights of Toulouse and UBB
We now have to deal with the rest. His studies first: “With the busy year at the competition level, he was unable to do what he wanted – financial management – after getting the baccalaureate in June 2022”, says his mother. His career: “He chose his agent on his own but I know that his priority is to play, play and play. We will leave him alone,” she adds. There it will surely be the dad who will have an opinion on the proposals which are beginning to flow, while the UBB and Toulouse have been whispering in his ear for many months: “He is part of this generation a little impatient, necessarily, notes Franck Let’s correct. But he showed last year that he had stayed with us.” Unless the other powerful club in the region, the LOU is also interested in him since the appointment as sports director of Fabien Gengenbacher, the former boss of the athlete from the capital of the Alps!
Knowing that there are also the economic realities of a club, the FCG which saved its place in Pro D2 in extremis with a palace revolution placing a new president at its head since July 10. And from its first speech, the Gazzotti dossier invites itself into the question-and-answer game of its first press conference: “We are in an economic war, some (clubs) are outbidding and offering astronomical sums to players, he explains. Afterwards, it is also the ability to give him confidence. For having discussed in May with him and his agent, he is not at all in a logic of departure. But it is was before all the adventures of the club. He is a young, brilliant player who still has to learn. He was very disappointed that we forgot about him in the final stages, especially the final (of Pro D2 against Oyonnax). “
Soon to be U20 world champion?
And now comes the next, the most immediate: this world final: “A kid from the rugby school who would be world champion, it would be such a source of pride for the FCA, enthuses the boss, Laurent Cavaillé But he is already a model, especially since another youngster, from 2005, made him the heyday of the French U18s, Léo Boullier.”
In the pre-match, Sini Gazzotti is not going to upset anything in his ritual: “A simple SMS, always short, she explains. We spoke for half an hour on Tuesday but then I leave him alone. be two words: “good game. Nothing more.” And the anguish of the parents? “I don’t worry about him because I know the amount of work put in to get there and I know in advance the efforts he will make to win; it’s more for the team that I’m afraid. I just want him to win. Period.”
Victory which would mean a world championship title: “We were talking about it with him on Tuesday, he did some research and he found traces of rugby in Lithuania only with a match against Sweden in 1993. When I left, I didn’t even know this sport existed. And even less that his son would be the actor of a world final, thirty years later…
