At just 20 years old, Eduardo Camavinga will be the youngest of the French football team in Qatar, for the 2022 World Cup. After a few thwarted promises in Blue, the young international has everything to prove again…
[Mis à jour le 9 novembre 2022 à 21h38] He will celebrate his 20th birthday tomorrow, Thursday November 10, and he should be smiling. Of these dazzling smiles that have been beaming on the grounds of Ligue 1 and then La Liga for four years now. Eduardo Camavinga is part of the list of players that Didier Deschamps listed this Wednesday, at 20 Hours of TF1, as a prelude to the World Cup in Qatar. The young international, winner of the Champions League with Real Madrid last season, will fly to Doha next week. A new major step in the meteoric rise of this midfielder, with extraordinary talent and precocity.
Camavinga’s short history with the France team is one of a promising love at first sight, followed by a period of doubt. In just three games, the former Rennais had made a strong impression at the end of 2020, before being forced to take a break due to injury, then returning at the worst time: during the pitiful Nations League campaign at the last spring. After these thwarted promises, a winning return, during a World Cup in addition, would allow the announced youngest of the Blues to pass the course which he still lacks to enter the legend.
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An upset story with the France team
Barely naturalized at the end of 2019, Eduardo Camavinga wasted no time in making his appearance in the France team. A pro at Stade Rennais for a year and a French citizen for barely a week at the time, he immediately found himself under the thumb of Sylvain Ripoll, a former Rennais himself, who had become coach of the France U23 team. Appointment is made for the qualifications for the Euro. A victory against Georgia (3-2) and a few minutes of play are enough to realize that his story in Blue has only just begun. The journey with the Espoirs will nevertheless be short-lived.
From the fall of 2020, Didier Deschamps, in search of the providential man in the midfield in the absence of a certain Paul Pogba (already), called Camavinga in the A team. The Rennais was then 17 years old. The thirty minutes offered to the young torchbearer, who entered the game in place of N’Golo Kanté in the 63rd minute against Croatia, will be convincing (4-2).
The following month, during a friendly against Ukraine, Pogba is back, but the opportunity to associate the cador of the Blues with the nugget Camavinga is enticing. Already comfortable in his international clothes, the latter will finally go to coal from the start of the match (he will be replaced by Pogba in the 59th minute). And he will be rewarded for it, with a good slaughter and a first goal full of panache in a tricolor festival (7-1). “He is able to do things that others may not be doing so well. He has everything going for him”, summed up Didier Deschamps at the time, visibly charmed.
Camavinga will play another half hour with France, in Croatia, in October 2020 (1-2). Then muscle fatigue will force him to take a break, with Rennes where he is still playing at this time in his young career, as with the France team. Before the 2022 World Cup, the one who has since moved on to real Madrid only reappeared once in the blue jersey: as a starter during the snub against Denmark last September, in Copenhagen (2-0). After 45 minutes in halftone, he will be replaced at halftime. So much so that his participation in the World Cup at the end of the year was still not obvious at the start of the school year. The successive packages of Kanté and his mentor Pogba this time offer him an invaluable chance to shine before Christmas.
Angolan origins and a sports fairy tale
Eduardo Camavinga was born on November 10, 2002 in Miconje, a small town located about 500 km west of Brazzaville and Kinshasa, the neighboring capitals of the two Congos. It was in this Angolan enclave, wedged between the Atlantic and the two twin republics, that his parents, originally from Congo Brazzaville, took refuge before his birth. He will keep no memories of it, or almost: Camavinga flies away for France, with his family, when he is barely one year old. The trip will take them first to Lille and then to Fougères, a city on the “Marches de Bretagne” where the young Eduardo will spend his childhood.
It is also in this medieval city of Ille-et-Vilaine that he will put on his first crampons, trying his hand at football after having thought about judo for a while. It will very quickly make the happiness of the Flag of Fougères, the local club, merged in 2011 with its rival AGL (the late “Secular Avant-garde”). But difficult for a national club to retain such a nugget.
Eduardo Camavinga was spotted by the area’s biggest client, Stade Rennais, which he joined in the summer of 2013. Local legend says that the same year, when the family home under construction near Fougères burned down in a fire, his father would have refused a kitty of support, saying he was certain of his son’s future in football. The Camavinga have the vista and will be rewarded for it: the very young player will quickly establish himself as one of the most promising hopes of his generation.
Six years after his arrival in Rennes, he will obtain French nationality, for him and his family. All with the help of the club and even the French Football Federation … which already had a small idea in mind.
A revelation at Stade Rennais
Trained by Stade Rennais from 2013, Eduardo Camavinga has set records for precocity there. In Rennes, he will play from the age of 15 with the under-17 team, then in reserve the following year. At the end of 2018, he became the youngest player to turn professional, at just 16, then the youngest Ligue 1 player in the history of the “Reds and Blacks” and finally the club’s youngest scorer since its creation.
He will also be, still with Stade Rennais, the youngest footballer to obtain the title of “Player of the Month” in Ligue 1, in August 2019. Impressive narrowly against AS Monaco, PSG and many others, Camavinga will assert himself as a very versatile relay midfielder, a real blaster, capable of directing the game as much as supporting his team in a more defensive position.
A consecration in two seasons at Real Madrid
If Stade Rennais manages to keep its nugget during the 2020 transfer window, Eduardo Camavinga is one of the players under 20 with the highest potential on the transfer market in the summer of 2021 (he will also be part of the of the famous list of the biggest potentials of the transfer window, established by the reference site Transfermarkt).
The great Real, who will break their teeth that year on Kylian Mbappé, will not let their luck slip away with Rennais: Camavinga joins Madrid for six seasons, after a transfer then estimated at 40 million euros, bonus included , by the Spanish daily Marca (it has since been revised to 31 million euros, 45 million euros with bonus).
The first season at Real, Camavinga spent part of it on the bench of substitutes, understudying the giants Casemiro, Kroos and Modric, almost unbeatable. He nevertheless managed a few sensational entries which allowed him to catch the eye of Carlo Ancelotti and to participate fully in the club’s European adventure.
An already well-stocked track record
Before this World Cup, Eduardo Camavinga played 13 games with Real Madrid this season. We must add 26 games in La Liga last season, where he was the author of two goals and two assists, but also about fifteen Champions League games in total.
At 20, his record is enough to make people jealous: with Stade Rennais, Camavinga won the Coupe de France in 2019 (even if he was not on the score sheet for the final against PSG) and, previously , the French under-17 championship. With Real, he won the Spanish league last year, but also the Spanish Super Cup, the Champions League and the UEFA Super Cup. Adding the greatest of international team trophies to the list would, at his age, be an arguably historic feat.