Always at ease in the media exercise, Ange Capuozzo (25 years old), thoughtful and eloquent, almost seemed embarrassed when he was asked last week if he was going through his best period in the Toulouse jersey.
“I wouldn’t want to jinx it too much, but so far things are going pretty well,” he replied, with as much modesty as superstition.
« We feel that he really has confidence”
Bad luck will wait: two days later, the Italian international scored a hat-trick during his team’s big victory on Sunday against Toulon (57-5).
“He improves every ball he touches, adding a lot of speed. We also saw him very aggressive in defense. We feel that he really has confidence,” greeted Jean Bouilhou, one of the assistant coaches of the red and black management, after the meeting.
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Best crosser in the Top 14
With five tries now since the start of the season, Capuozzo is third among the top scorers in the Top 14, behind Bayonne’s Sireli Maqala and Lyon’s Baptiste Couilloud.
Beyond his activity on the field, including defensively despite his limited size (1.77 m, 79 kg), the statistics confirm the current good dispositions of the Toulouse winger or fullback, best crosser in the championship and on the podium players breaking the most tackles.
The person concerned sees this in particular as the fruit of his “regularity in freshness and recovery” and his ability to “be able to move on” after having been betrayed several times by his body.
A finger injury in the spring
Highly anticipated upon his arrival on the banks of the Garonne in 2022 after his spectacular actions with the Italian team or with Grenoble in Pro D2, he was away from the field for several months the following year due to an injury to his scapula.
A broken finger last spring made him fall further behind the strong competition in Toulouse, on the wing and at the back, between Matthis Lebel, Juan Cruz Mallia, Blair Kinghorn and Thomas Ramos.
In full possession of his means since September, Capuozzo continues – seven matches in eight days, including six starts – and is building up confidence.
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“I was able to grow”
“I am no longer the same player and the same person as two and a half years ago when I arrived, from Pro D2 at that,” notes the Franco-Italian. “I also learned from certain periods, from certain mistakes. »
“I was able to grow,” he explains. “I don’t know if we can talk about a trigger, but certainly an evolution. On the one hand there is age and on the other the experience of the two years that have passed. »
Unlike the French internationals, “protected” this weekend before the November tests, Capuozzo is available to his club for the trip to Bayonne on Sunday at the end of the 9th day of Top 14 (9:05 p.m.).
November tour with Italy
He will then be one of the headliners for Italy, facing Argentina, Georgia and New Zealand in the coming weeks with the ambition of confirming the progress observed during the last Six Nations Tournament. .
The Toulouse public should have plenty of time to make up for lost time later: the pocket fullback, finally launched, is about to extend his contract at the Stadium for four years, until 2029.
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