GUENDOUZI. At 23, midfielder Mattéo Guendouzi is in Qatar with the Blues to play in his first international competition. Profile, statistics, career with the France team and state of form for the World Cup…
His first real international experience will therefore be a World Cup. At 23, Mattéo Guendouzi is part of the group of the France team which is playing the 2022 World Cup in Qatar. The Olympique de Marseille midfielder was called up by Didier Deschamps after a promising first half of the season with theOM, in line with a successful 2021-2022 financial year. Far from being at the top of the hierarchy in the tricolor midfield, the ex of Lorient and Arsenal found himself on the plane for the Gulf in particular because of the packages of Paul Pogba and N’Golo Kanté. In recent months, Mattéo Guendouzi is slowly melting into the mold of the France team, regularly called by the coach. Will the World Cup allow him to grab playing time and shake up the order that seems to be established in midfield, behind Aurélien Tchouaméni and Adrien Rabiot?
Before being selected for the 2022 World Cup, Mattéo Guendouzi rose through the ranks within the French teams. The midfielder made his debut in the tricolor jersey in 2016, with the under-18s, before continuing until 2021, without stopping, with the under-19s, under-20s and hopefuls. In the meantime, Didier Deschamps gives him a taste of the pennant team by calling him up twice in 2019 with the Blues, without giving him playing time. Mattéo Guendouzi finally plays his first minutes in the tricolor jersey on November 16, 2021 , during a trip to Finland. In one year, he has accumulated six caps (1 tenure) and scored one goal, in a friendly match against South Africa in March 2022.
Mattéo Guendouzi was born on April 14, 1999 in Poissy in the Yvelines department in Île-de-France. Son of a French mother and a Franco-Moroccan father, the midfielder grew up in Bazemont. A talented footballer, he joined Paris Saint-Germain at the age of six where he did all of his pre-training and part of his training. At PSG, he finds himself alongside Antoine Bernede (RB Salzburg), Boubakary Soumaré (Leicester) and Stanley N’Soki (Hoffenheim). In 2014, when he was only fifteen, Mattéo Guendouzi left Paris Saint-Germain and joined the Lorient training center.
It is in Brittany that Mattéo Guendouzi begins to test the high level. On October 15, 2016, he made his professional debut against FC Nantes but, after a few appearances, saw his club go down to Ligue 2 at the end of the season. Although he refused to extend when the contract ended the following summer, the midfielder revealed himself in the second division. But internally, the climate is not looking good and the young nugget decides to take off after being put in the closet by her trainer Mickaël Landreau.
At 19, he arrived at Arsenal, one of the London clubs. With the Gunners, he had a full 2018-2019 season with nearly 50 games played, opening the doors to the French team. But while he appears to be a centerpiece of the team’s midfield, the ousting of Unai Emery will also push him towards the start. Mikel Arteta, the athlete’s new strongman, gives him less playing time in 2019-2020 and disputes will lead to the Frenchman’s departure for Germany in October 2020.
On loan to Herta Berlin, Mattéo Guendouzi finds playing time and falls into the sights of OM who manage to enlist him in the summer of 2021, in the form of a loan. No prospects were opening up at Arsenal for the midfielder. In Marseille, the young Frenchman quickly melted into the mould, under the leadership of Jorge Sampaoli. He played 56 games in one season, his record, established himself as an essential element of the Marseille midfield and was adopted by an incandescent Vélodrome. Despite the change of coach and the arrival of Igor Tudor on the bench, Guendouzi remains one of the centerpieces of the Olympian XI. So many performances that opened the doors to Qatar with the Blues.
If, in Qatar, Mattéo Guendouzi defends the colors of the France team, he could also have flown to the World Cup with another selection: Morocco. Indeed, the father of the French international is Franco-Moroccan. Thus, he was entitled, younger, to integrate the Atlas Lions. When he was still only in the lower categories of the national team, Hervé Renard, then Moroccan coach, had approached the midfielder to offer him to defend the colors of his second country of origin. But the main interested party declined the proposal, constantly evoking his goal of playing for the France team. In 2018, Hervé Renard confirmed: “I spoke to him once when he was playing in Lorient. But you know, we can’t force someone to play with us. It depends on him and his entourage.”