Lensois Jonathan Clauss explodes this season in Ligue 1 -
AFP
Jonathan Clauss is one of the revelations of the Ligue 1 season at RC Lens.
Arrived this summer from the German club Bielefeld, the right side discovers the French championship at 28 years old.
A late arrival which is explained after a dented course after his training in Strasbourg, his club at heart which closed the doors to him when he turned pro.
This is one of the revelations of the season.
At 28, the Lensois Jonathan Clauss has only just discovered Ligue 1. Arrived this summer with the Sang et Or after spending two years in Bielefeld (Germany), the Alsatian is preparing to face this Saturday (9 p.m.) the Racing Club de Strasbourg, his favorite club where he was trained before being rejected when turning pro at the age of 18.
Ten years later, at the end of a dented course between odd jobs, amateur football and lower divisions, the right side has achieved his dream and no longer refrains from going even higher as he confides in this interview granted at
20 Minutes.
What state of mind are you in when you find Strasbourg, your training club this Saturday under the colors of Lens?
Strasbourg is everything to me.
This is where I started my training at 5-6 years old.
It's all my childhood, it's the place I grew up in.
Everything I was able to experience when I was young, I experienced in Strasbourg.
My attachment to it is incredible.
When we ask players about their favorite club, there are plenty who answer Real, Barça….
For me, it's Strasbourg and it will remain so.
When I was very young, I used to go to La Meinau with my father, where I was a ball collector.
I remember the heyday of Niang, Pagis, Farnerud.
I would like to wear this club's jersey one day, but if that doesn't happen, that's okay.
However, the club did not keep you after your training.
Did the scar take a long time to close?
Yes.
At 18, a month before the end of the season, the club warned me that they did not want to keep me and that I had to go and try out elsewhere.
For me, it was over.
I thought I wouldn't be able to play anywhere else.
It was hard to turn the page after more than ten years at this club.
How long did it take you to digest and rethink about a professional career?
It took me five years.
I went to AS Pierrots Vauban (2010-2013), an amateur club in Strasbourg, where I just wanted to find the youth I had lost in Racing.
I went out a lot at that time.
My adolescence started at 18, a little later than the others.
Afterwards, I went to Linz (Germany) where the pleasure of football gradually returned (2013-2015).
Then Bruno Paterno, Raon l'Etape's trainer, called me to come and play in CFA 2. I spoke to my father and some friends who told me that there might be still a little something to go get.
And to be seen, you had to come back to France.
That's how I went to Raon in 2015. I drove an hour every day after work
Were you working at that time?
Yes, I was in the interim.
I worked at the Post Office or as a distributor of pubs.
It was work to fill the time when I was not in training.
I needed a job between 8 am and 3 pm to be able to train in the evening.
At the end of the season in Raon, I went to spend a week of testing in Avranches (National).
And they kept me.
Is this where the hope of becoming a pro came back?
Yes.
I thought it was now or never.
Suddenly, I got more involved, I paid more attention.
And on the field, we had a great course in the Coupe de France where we lost in the quarterfinals against PSG.
All of this brought us to light.
I had to resign at Avranches the following season but Quevilly (Ligue 2) contacted me and I accepted.
When you finally start in Ligue 1 at 28, what do you think?
It's a bit of the 80-20.
At 80%, I say to myself: "That's it, I'm there, finally".
I worked for it.
And the remaining 20% is to go even further.
I'm very happy to be in Ligue 1 but I don't put limits on myself.
I feel exceptionally good at RC Lens.
I want to be strong every weekend and prove that I'm not here for nothing.
I want to break everything.
When you see your name in the eleven type of the first part of the season in Ligue 1, how do you take it?
I don't take him as a guy who thinks it's normal to be part of this team.
For now, everything is happening so quickly that I do not have the time and do not want to realize what is happening to me.
I find it crazy to see my name next to Mbappé's.
And at the same time, I find it cool and it makes me want to continue even more because it's motivating.
It means I'm on the right track.
To the point of thinking of the Blues?
I have the feeling that it remains inaccessible.
More and more people are talking to me about it, but I smile.
This is not my primary goal after six good months in Ligue 1. Even if it would be exceptional to go there one day.
How does this bumpy and different course from many footballers help you?
I am more aware of what I have today.
It's probably not the same for a guy who signed pro at 17 and for whom everything seems normal.
For me, nothing is normal in what is happening to me.
Five years ago, I had to combine football and a job.
It was a bit of a hassle every month.
Today, I help financially my sister, my mother, my father because it's crazy what happens to me.
It's surreal.
I feel like it's a joke.
Going from almost nothing to almost everything is unheard of.
However, I have not changed my lifestyle, nor my way of seeing things.
I manage to keep my feet on the ground.
I live as I lived before except that there are no more the same figures on the payslip.
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In Strasbourg,
j
UGE "good footballer" but "physically frail"
The dream of breaking into his training club had vanished in 2010. That year, RC Strasbourg was already swimming in troubled waters and would soon be diving in CFA2.
Jonathan Clauss, he had been judged too fair to integrate the pro group.
“It was the athletic side that sinned with him.
Its projection seemed difficult to us among the seniors ”, remembers Jean-Marc Kuentz, then in charge of training within the Alsatian club.
Thierry Laurey's current racing assistant nevertheless has “very good memories” of the native of Osthoffen, a village in the Bas-Rhin where his mother and sister still reside.
“He was very endearing, full of life, smart, very competitive.
He had good technique and was already a good footballer.
He did well to believe in his star.
”Which therefore led him to an atypical course in the lower divisions, until his revelation in Lens.
"It does not surprise me that half that it is there today", reacts his former partner in the Vosges Ablaye Ba.
“From the first training session of the season in 2015, he impressed me.
I thought he would have a good trip and football can go very quickly.
»Especially on one side with Jonathan Clauss.
In Strasbourg, Thibaut Gagnepain
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