The month of July begins today, and the first recruits are expected at ASSE while the group is expected at l’Etrat next Monday for the resumption of training. Yunis Abdelhamid could be, in the next few hoursthe first recruit of the Kilmer Sport Ventures era. A former Saint-Etienne player, who worked alongside him for a season, is full of praise for the former Reims player and satisfied for ASSE, in an interview given to Poteaux Carrés.
Today coach of the U19s of OGC Nice, Cédric Varrault worked alongside Yunis Abdelhamid during a season in Dijon, in 2016-2017 under the orders of a certain… Olivier Dall’Oglio. The former central defender of the Greens (2007-2010) was very complimentary towards his ex-teammate.
Cédric Varrault : “I have great memories of Yunis Abdelhamid, he’s really someone I like a lot. First of all, on a human level, he’s really a good person. In addition, he’s a real leader. He’s a positive person and I think he’s had some exceptional seasons with Reims. He’s a very strong and experienced defender. He’s shown over the years that he had and still has the level of Ligue 1. He’s definitely one of the reference players in his position. He’s really a very good recruit for ASSE!”
The questioning about his age is a false debate for me. Yunis is probably the L1 player who has played the most over the last 6 seasons! He is still coming off a season with more than 30 starts in the league in a team that finished in the top half of the elite table, knowing that he missed a few matches because of the CAN because he was in the Moroccan selection. Yunis is someone who does not neglect any detail in the invisible preparation, who invests himself fully in his job. He gives himself the means to succeed and last at the highest level.
He will be 37 this autumn but we should not get hung up on his age. The season I celebrated my 37th birthday, the one where Yunis sometimes played alongside me, I was started more than thirty times by Olivier Dall’Oglio. We stayed in Ligue 1 and my playing time was more or less equivalent to what I had the previous season, the one of the promotion, still under Olivier. And then in this position of central defender, it is not only the physical that comes into play. There is anticipation, experience, reading the game.
Yunis has a very good header. This is also a strong point for a central defender. He is 1m90 tall and he puts a lot of determination into his interventions so he necessarily has solid assets to put forward in the aerial domain. The advantage is also that he is a left-handed central defender, there are fewer of them than right-handers. Yunis is left-handed but not left-handed! I think he has improved in his use of the ball over time. He had already made progress in this area with us and he perfected it all in Reims. Yunis has improved with the ball at his feet. He had not been able to develop his technical qualities when he was young because he did not go through a training center. I find him rather comfortable with the ball. He is a complete defender.
