Anthony Mahoungou with the Eagles at training camp, in 2018 -
KENA BETANCUR / AFP
The Super Bowl takes place on the night of Sunday to Monday and will pit Tampa Bay against Kansas City.
On this occasion,
20 Minutes takes an
interest in the French in the NFL.
While none have played in an official match for 30 years, some have come very close, and the future is bright.
They were almost there, but everything is "almost".
Like Marc-Angelo Soumah or Philippe Gardent in the heart of the 2000s, Anthony Dablé and Anthony Mahoungou have seen the NFL closely in recent years: training camps, preseason games, but the cruel stop at the time of the selection of 53 who make up the team at the start of the season.
“I passed close and I still believe in it, ensures Mahoungou.
I study US football so much that if I had judged that it was too high a level for me, I would have said to myself "no, that's what I'm aiming for".
But I was able to compare myself with the greatest and I know that I have what to make my place in this league.
"
Mahoungou, who will comment on the Superbowl on Sunday for the Chaîne l'Equipe, is the latest to be added to the list of “almost” heirs of Richard Tardits, the only French player to have played in an official NFL game, between 1990 and 1992. It's been a long time, especially when we compare to the almost forty French drafted in the NBA since.
“I understand the comparison, but it doesn't work the same way.
The NFL is an extremely conservative league ”, immediately cut Pierre Trochet, director of development at the French Federation (FFFA).
NFL Europe was a good stepping stone, but it's gone
If European basketball has long proved its worth in the NBA, this is not at all the case in the NFL, despite the presence of a few Germans here and there, a Dane or an Estonian.
It must be said that the best European championship, in Germany, is only semi-professional.
“In basketball, we have a professional league that allows access to the highest level and then to switch with the NBA, continues Marc-Angelo Soumah, consultant beIN Sports and also to the comments of the Super Bowl Sunday.
This is the system that works best and that suits both the French system and the American system.
But in US football, we are not pro, we are not even semi pro.
There is this gap.
For a time, the NFL Europe was a good stepping stone, but since its demise (2007), players will try their luck individually in college.
"
This is the case of Anthony Mahoungou.
Having left France at the age of 20, he joined a Junior College before being recruited by Purdue University in Indiana.
He tells :
The Americans are curious about us off the pitch, but when it comes to the pitch… One day the attacking coach explained to me how they recruited me.
It was his assistant who had seen a video of me and who presented it to the main coach, saying “I'm not going to tell you his name and where he comes from”.
The coach then said he wanted me, and he was told that I was French afterwards.
I was judged as a footballer, but for some Europe it is still unclear.
This is all going to take time.
"
Currently, there are three ways for a European who wants to try his luck in the NFL, explains Pierre Trochet.
First the university route, therefore, consisting of joining a college of 1st NCAA division after his 18 years.
Then the CFL, the Canadian League, a sort of second division of US football.
And finally the “international route”, which invites each year between 10 and 12 selected European athletes to come and train for several months in the United States and try to take the plunge from a European club.
"Maybe we'll have to wait for another generation, but we're getting there"
“It's a bit mathematical, the more we fill in all the recruitment channels, the more chances we have of getting there,” continues Pierre Trochet.
And this is the first time they are available to us, we have never been so well represented.
The 22-year-old Frenchman Yoann Miangué is in fact one of the lucky ones chosen for this 2021 vintage “international pathway”. He will join the contingent of French players in the US, alongside the six French players in CFL and the half-dozen of NCAA players.
Among the latter, Junior Aho in Dallas, Jordan Avissey in Buffalo or Wilfried Pene (within a few seasons) will have real chances of joining the NFL.
Marc-Angelo Soumah imagines them potentially having a chance to integrate special teams into the league, a sort of substitute who will play a role in very specific phases of the game.
“Aho and Avissey are at a level where they're going to develop and have college playing time, and therefore show off,” he explains.
The second phase is dominating.
Yes, the NFL is more interested, but we are not yet at the moment when we can say "a French in the NFL, it's for tomorrow".
Maybe them in two or three years, maybe we'll have to wait for another generation, but we're getting there.
And we will get there even more if we send every year not two, but 10 that have a chance at the university level and maybe NFL.
"
Democratization thanks to beIN and the Team
For how to do it, French US football is betting on the TV effect.
For ten years, the NFL has experienced increasing democratization in France, thanks first to beIN Sports and then the Chaîne l'Equipe, which will both broadcast the Super Bowl on Sunday evening from midnight.
“L'Equipe offered free-to-air broadcasting and beIN found a more technical audience,” Pierre Trochet sums up.
Before the Covid, the Federation broke its record for licensees in 2019 at 23,508.
"
Frenchman Anthony Dablé catches an assist in pre-season game with the Atlanta Falcons - Kevin C. Cox / GETTY IMAGES NORTH AMERICA / Getty Images via AFP
Without forgetting the Internet effect.
The NFL is the most financially powerful sports league in the world and is flooding all networks.
Pierre Trochet: “For a minor sport like US football in France, having a media powerhouse like the NFL is incredible.
It's so easy for a young person to come across pictures, or to see the Super Bowl and say to themselves I want to try… ”
So mentalities change.
US football, in a way, has come closer.
Or in any case, it doesn't seem as inaccessible anymore as it used to be.
Pierre Trochet admits to having been struck in recent years by the state of mind of young French people who are leaving to try their luck.
“There is a very interesting generational factor,” he explains.
At the time of the Soumah or the Gardent, there was a sort of French mentality where we said to ourselves that we would not succeed.
Today, they are in the "why not?"
They started to train more, to give themselves more means ... "
Anthony Mahoungou confirms.
“I'm not going to say that I was the forerunner, but I never thought that the United States was impossible.
In the minds of some coaches or older teammates that I had, it was.
When I was getting ready to leave, a former club said to me "be happy to be in the team".
Me, I hear that at 19, I tell myself is he kidding me?
I didn't set myself any limits.
"
The search for "Tony Parker of US football"
Former president of the Federation from 2010 to 2014, Marc-Angelo Soumah believes that the arrival of one or more French people will come through a structural change and a professionalization of American football in France.
Yes, "the best European athletic talents are with us", yes "a first step has been taken in democratization", but the American trigger is not yet accessible to all.
“This change in mentality, we can see it in a few, but we do not yet have the structure to go from 'good player interested in US football' to 'player with athletic qualities interesting for Americans.'
We must be able to capitalize on this democratization.
Today, the road to the United States is still too long, we must remove the obstacles and mark it out.
"
It targets, among other things, training capacity, mentality in preparation, sports hygiene, academic follow-up, which is decisive in an academic career when you go to the United States, and the promotion of French talents across the Atlantic.
"This is how we will not have two who leave each year, but 30 or 40, abounds the former receiver.
The goal is not to have just one player on an NFL team, but to have a star.
This is where the switch will take place.
"
What one could call “the Tony Parker effect”, behind which the French US football runs desperately.
"It can change everything in terms of popularity, in terms of media exposure, in terms of recruitment," continues Pierre Trochet.
We have all the locomotives that are on the rails today.
But they are at 50 km / h.
With a Tony, they will be at 1000. "
Mahoungou concludes: “Me, it was one of my biggest motivations to tell myself that I can have an impact on the opportunities that the next generations will have.
I want to have the same impact as Tony.
"
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