According to Le Parisien, the main pitch of the municipal stadium in the city of Yvelines, where PSG’s youth teams train in the Paris suburbs, will be named after Matteo Guendouzi this Wednesday. This choice may come as a surprise since the Marseille player had refused to wear his former club’s jersey during the World Cup.
As a special end-of-year treat, students from Jean-Zay College in Verneuil-sur-Seine in the Paris suburbs will meet Matteo Guendouzi on Wednesday morning. The international footballer, who was a vice world champion with the French national team, is returning to “share his experience” in the place where it all began for him.
Born in Poissy, Guendouzi obtained his first license at PSG at the age of 6. After seven years in the club’s youth academy, he joined the pre-training center based in the Yvelines commune, located on the leisure base. This building, owned by the Île-de-France region, is where the young talents of the capital club reside throughout the year while pursuing their education at the Verneuil-sur-Seine college.
Matteo Guendouzi, now 24 years old, will begin his day of celebration at the school where he grew up. Some of his former teachers are still working at Jean-Zay College. Fabien Aufrechter, the 31-year-old mayor of Verneuil-sur-Seine who attended the same school, mentions that they even had a Spanish teacher in common. He smiles and says, “Matteo is retracing his own footsteps, and it’s a beautiful story.”
For more than two years, Mayor Aufrechter has been leading the project to name the main pitch at the François-Pons Stadium after the former Parisian prodigy. He has met with Guendouzi’s family, who still reside in the Seine riverbank town, on “five or six occasions.”
“They are discreet and humble people who didn’t necessarily seek this tribute,” reveals the mayor. “We convinced them and built this project together with Matteo, his family, his sponsors, and his former clubs. It’s a wonderful way to promote sports and honor those who bring glory to the city.”
GFFN | George Boxall