Football’s forgotten ballers: Yoann Gourcuff

Football over the years has given us some of the most silken, skilful, elegant, and mesmerising players who have brought a certain joy to the game, making you fall in love with them and, by extension, the sport.

While some stay indelible in the hearts and minds for time immemorial, others slowly and steadily fade away from the public eye, eventually becoming nothing but a footnote in the rich annals of the sport, with their names bringing about a nonchalant shrug or a look of indifference in footballing discourse.

In this series, we look to shed light upon those players who for a brief time shone the brightest in football’s galaxy of stars, threatening to even outshine the biggest of them all at certain stages, only to then fall away, albeit remaining in their own right stars of the game. 

Welcome to “Football’s forgotten ballers”, where we roll back the years to bring out a few relatively obscure names and celebrate them for the joy they brought to us, no matter how brief their time in the spotlight was.

For our first baller, we take you to France, to a man who was once christened as the second coming of Zinedine Zidane in his pomp.

We give you: Yoann Gourcuff.

An glitch in the matrix, a joyful anomaly

Gourcuff was born into a family that was full of athletes, so it was no surprise that sport came to him quite effortlessly. However, it was his father’s influence that drew him towards football, despite being equally excellent at tennis himself. But seeing his father play in the highest echelons of French football piqued his interest and he decided to walk into his dad’s footsteps.

A big admirer of the Brazil side of the 1970s, he made a conscious effort to inculcate the flair and the dynamism of those players, with Pele being a huge model of inspiration. 

With his father managing Rennes, Yoann decided to walk in the path of his father and joined the club’s academy. He slowly and steadily rose through the ranks before making his professional debut for the club in Jan 2004. He kept on making giant strides with Rennes as the 2005-06 season  brought him in the public eye with his style of play winning him a lot of  plaudits, and also drawing similarities to Zinedine Zidane, who was arguably at the highest point of his career at that time.

AC Milan eventually won the race for his signature, believing that they had found the next talisman to lead their midfield and cement their dominance across the continent. But something about the move did not work. Gourcuff tried hard, but just did not fit. Whenever he played, it felt like he was walking on eggshells, and his temperament and attitude were always put into question.

Eventually, it came to a point where a move away felt like the perfect solution for both parties, and off went Gourcuff back to France in Bordeaux.

Little did he know, and little did the world know what was going to follow.

At Bordeaux, Gourcuff found favour and love for the game again. He was gliding on the turf like a ballerina, full of elegance and pride. The swagger returned, and so did the flair that made him look more Brazilian than French. He made Bordeaux play along his lines like the Pied Piper, and they followed his example. Les Girondins looked formidable, they looked dangerous. At the helm of it all was Gourcuff, who was now playing like he was 10 feet tall, ball sticking to him like it was in love with him. 

And then came that day when Gourcuff made the football world stop whatever it was doing, and take notice of him. It was January 11, 2009. Bordeaux were facing a rather well-stacked and formidable opponent in Paris Saint-Germain. It was supposed to be a test of Bordeaux’s title credentials. Instead, it became the game that announced Yoann Gourcuff to the world.

Wearing number 8, long sleeves and all, Gourcuff scored the goal that made it 3-0 for Bordeaux. However, it was not just any ordinary goal. It was a goal that made an indelible place for itself in the pantheon of French footballing highlights. A goal so eerily magnificent that it could send down shivers of excitement down your spine even to this date. Back to goal, two defenders galloping towards him. And with the fluid motion of a river in full flow, he spun between the two like they were non-existent, executing the Marseille turn, or the Zidane turn with breathtaking perfection. And before the crowd could even fathom the grandeur of the skill, Gourcuff punctuated the skill with an outrageous shot from outside his boot that rattled into the back of the net before the entire stadium could even gather their senses once again.

The crowd went berserk, the PSG side was dumbstruck, and there stood Gourcuff, marveling at the beauty of his work like Michaelangelo admiring “The David” after its completion. Bordeaux won that game 4-0. But that win was not an ordinary win. It was not even a win that took them to the title. It was the game that elevated Gurcouff from just a normal boy to being “Le successeur” to Zidane himself.

Such was the magnitude of that goal, it made people feel like a little boy. This was what former Bordeaux player Christophe Dugarry had to say in the aftermath of that goal:

“That goal was no accident.” “It showed there was something magical about him. I felt ill when Zidane retired. Watching Gourcuff has cured me. When I see players like him, I feel like a small boy again.”

Bordeaux went on to win the Ligue 1 and the Coupe de la Ligue double that season. And Gourcuff went on to win the Player of the Year, a place in the Ligue 1 Team of the season, and a place in the Ballon d’or nominations, where he finished 20th. He had 12 goals and 12 assists in the league that season, and it was finally felt that he would be the man to be seated on the throne that Zizou vacated.

Unfortunately for him, and even more unfortunately so for French football, Gourcuff was not able to replicate or capture the highs of that season. Injuries, poor form, and multiple skirmishes meant that he drifted into the annals of obscurity, making him French football’s biggest enigma, or a classic case study of what could have been.

But for that one season, Gourcuff was majestic. A Frenchman that danced like a Brazilian, glided like a Spaniard, and mesmerised the world. Elegant, unplayable, and joyfully untouchable when he was on song, he still remains the closest thing the football world has come to having a Zidane replacement, and a forever “the streets will never forget” player.