Unlucky lucky. 6-time champion can complete a career in 22 years
The current season for Bayern Munich is rather strange – at the beginning of the campaign, only the lazy did not predict the early resignation of Niko Kovacs, and a couple of days ago, the football community was shocked by the reason of the 22-year-old French national team Kingsley Coman. A young footballer in an interview with a German journalist explicitly stated that it was possible to complete his career in the foreseeable future if he had to go for the third time under the surgeon’s knife. As you know, in the last summer month, Koman seriously injured the ligaments of the ankle joint and was out of the game for almost 4 months.
Koman was born in the capital of France in a family of migrants from Guadeloupe, who moved to the European state in search of a better life and decently paid work. From early childhood, Kingsley showed a genuine interest in a soccer ball and constantly ran with him near the house. At the age of six, the midfielder was enrolled in a children’s team with a very poetic name “Senar-Moissi”, in which he stayed for two years. Representatives of the Paris Saint-Germain scout department arrived at one of his games, who were incredibly attracted to a miniature and nimble black boy. Kingsley’s father is a PSG fan with experience, so when he was offered to give his son under the wing of the coaching staff of the children’s team of the capital club, he happily took the child by the hand to the Academy of Parisians. For nine years, Koman was at the Academy, having managed to go from junior to main team player.
The debut for Paris Saint-Germain took place on February 18, 2013 in the championship game against Sochaux, which ended in defeat with a score of 2: 3. The PSG mentor Carlo Ancelotti singled out for 16 minutes (!) Coman 5 minutes of playing time, but that season he no longer appeared on the bench or on the field. Koman had already entered the history of the club, because before him there were no 16-year-old debutants in the team.
“PSG” that season became the champion of the country and the young boy was given a medal – it is clear that in advance, but he did not justify this advance, as he later played in just 3 matches for his native club. In the summer of 2014, the French were granted the status of a free agent, so he began to analyze the proposals received. It was reported that Arsenal, Liverpool, Newcastle, Tottenham, Bayer and Bordeaux were going to bestow a contract on a talented guy, but Juventus from Turin turned out to be more agile than all of them. As the footballer himself admitted in one of the interviews, Willy Sagnol personally wanted to see him in the ranks of the “Girondins”, but already then the “Old Signore” appeared on the horizon, offering the winger a five-year contract.
It cannot be said that in “Juventus” Koman showed himself in any way. He didn’t score a single goal in the Italian championship, having given only two assists in the games with Napoli and Parma, which had a disastrous season and with a bang from Serie A, without even waving his opponents goodbye.
In his first and only season for the Turin club (an incomplete match against Udinese in the 2015/16 campaign, he was not taken into account) Kingsley managed to become a champion, having spent only 5 games on the field in the starting lineup. After the debut match, Massimiliano Allegri did not stint on the commendation of Coman, stating that, despite his young age, he acted maturely and was intellectually without age, but the Italian voyage of the football player ended in the summer of 2015.
The fight for Coman won Bavaria – then Josep Guardiola was responsible for the results of the club, who made every effort to sign the Frenchman. Pep’s authority is high in all the clubs with which he had to cooperate, and Bayern was no exception to the rule – President Karl Kopfner allocated money for Coman’s salary and payment for a two-year lease, and the rest was a matter of technology.
The young man was eager to work side by side with the famous Spanish coach, who at one time intimidated the old Europe with Barça. The season began for Kingsley without pre-season training with new partners, but this was not the decisive factor in the game of the Frenchman. He began to stamp goals at once (for the first three games, the Coman sent 2 goals to the opponents’ goal), and also acted on his favorite left flank over the years. Guardiola, as it should be, praised the young player after the debut, and the player said that he was incredibly happy to see the confidence of the Spaniard.
In the first season, Kingsley for Bayern, who had Arjen Robben, Arturo Vidal, Philip Lam, Habi Alonson and Thomas Muller in partners, scored four times and acted as a projectile carrier. Koman spent the second season an order of magnitude weaker – perhaps this is due to the fact that Guardiola was replaced by Ancelotti, who intersected with Kingsley in Paris and did not particularly count on a young guy.