Yunis Abdelhamid should be ASSE’s first recruit. The 36-year-old central defender will sign his contract this Monday. The former Reims captain has a wealth of solid experience in Ligue 1. In an interview with Poteaux Carrés, his former teammate Loris Néry, who played at ASSE’s training center, confides. The two men met at Valenciennes between 2012 and 2014.
Loris Néry on his arrival at ASSE: “He will bring his experience and his leadership.”
“I think he’s a good signing, he’s an experienced guy who knows Ligue 1 well. Yunis has a great mentality, he was very popular in the locker room at Valenciennes. I consider him to be a top recruit despite his fairly advanced age. […]. I think he is a recruit who will fit in well with the values of Saint-Etienne, he will bring his experience and his leadership.
Yunis plays in a position where even at an advanced age you can still perform in L1. We saw him with Hilton in Montpellier, we saw him with Dante in Montpellier. Experience, sense of placement and reading the game are important elements. In restarts, Yunis was perhaps a little less technically good at the time than his friend Loïc Nestor, whom I later found in Grenoble. But I have seen Yunis progress in this area and clearly he has further progressed technically during his many years in Reims.
» He is humble, simple and at the same time very determined. “
He knows the League very well having played there for 7 years. He’s someone I really like sportingly but also on a human level. […] Yunis is a super cool and approachable guy. It’s been a while since we talked.[…] He told me that he would be happy to see me again. Yunis does not forget what he has been through. He is humble, simple and at the same time very determined. He is a real hard worker, it is not for nothing that he has had such a successful career to the point of signing at almost 37 years old at ASSE even though he did not go through a training center.
