He got off on the wrong floor
Esteban Lepaul walked into Clairefontaine on Monday, saw the two-star crest on the wall, and immediately went the wrong way. “I went to the wrong floor when I got here,” he says, laughing about it now.
Small thing. Telling, though, for a 26-year-old who was never really meant to be in that building. Lyon academy, then released into the lower divisions. Epinal. Orleans. Careers that go through Epinal and Orleans do not usually end at Clairefontaine, and the Rennes striker knows exactly how unlikely the last two years have been.
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Twenty-one goals changed the conversation
The breakthrough came at 24, which in modern football counts as late. Then last season happened: 21 goals, 5 assists, the Ligue 1 golden boot. The kid from Auxerre finally gave himself permission to think bigger.
“It was at the end of last season in Ligue 1, finishing top scorer. Not everyone finishes top scorer in one of Europe’s five biggest leagues. So I told myself: why not knock on the door of the national team? That is when the penny dropped.”
Zinedine Zidane picked up. The new France boss, still finding his feet after taking over from Didier Deschamps, named him in his first squad. Four Nations League games are lined up, Turkey away on Friday first.
He is not treating this as a day out
Play, score, get picked again. That is the plan, and Lepaul says it out loud. “I will have to fight for minutes and try to bring as much as possible. If there is one goal, I will take it. If there are several, that works too.”
The squad sat through a video on the history of the shirt when they arrived, the trophies and the generations handing it down. “We have to be the engine of our generation,” he says. Then the line that matters to him: “I want to be part of this team and of what happens next.”
Plenty of players get one cap. Keeping it is the hard part.
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