Steve Mounié fancied he was suited to the Premier League long before Huddersfield Town reached the same conclusion. Growing up in France after moving there from Benin as a four-year-old, the budding striker idolised Didier Drogba and dreamed of emulating the Ivorian. So he was thrilled when Huddersfield recognised his talent and paid £11.5m, a club-record fee, to prise him from Montpellier in July.
At Selhurst Park Mounié and his new club introduced themselves to the Premier League in spectacular style, the striker producing two emphatic finishes to crown a triumphant individual and collective performance. “Now people know who I am. I couldn’t imagine a better start. It’s a big confidence boost,” said Mounié before revealing his long-held admiration for Drogba – and also for Christian Benteke, the Crystal Palace forward who enjoyed the opening day of the season rather less than him.
“My idol is Drogba,” says Mounié. “Sometimes I just watch video clips of him, scoring goals over here. I think I have a similar style with him. I’m big like him. Benteke as well, who is a great striker. I have to learn off them.”
“ What [Drogba] did here is an inspiration to me. He is also African and we almost have the same story. He was born in Africa and came to France and then to England. I will try and follow in his footsteps. He is a great player and man. I’ve never met him but maybe I will in the future.”
Mounié has a long way to go if he is to follow in the footsteps of a player who won four Premier League titles, four FA Cups and the Champions League during nine years in English football but one cannot fault his ambition. And he has a head start on his hero, who was 24 when he moved from a Ligue 1 club, Marseille, to Chelsea in 2004. Mounié is 22.
At 6ft3in the Benin international is also a tad taller than Drogba and he demonstrated his aerial power when scoring his first goal in the Premier League, an unstoppable header that put Huddersfield 2-0 up against Palace after Joel Ward’s own goal had given the newly promoted team a deserved lead. He also showed his aerial strength in defence, heading clear corners at the near post just like Drogba used to do. And he then confirmed his clinical shooting by firing into the net to crown Huddersfield’s victory when Palace were threatening to get back into the game.
“For this year he has to confirm and make further steps but we should not forget he’s 22, still very young, has a lot of space to improve,” said David Wagner, the manager whose many qualities include an ability to recruit shrewdly. “The arrival of David Moss as Huddersfield’s head of football operations in the summer has strengthened that ability and it was the former Celtic scouting expert who first mentioned Mounié to Wagner.
“The good thing is that he isn’t only a goalscorer, he is also a very good character, open-minded, who likes to learn and who likes to work,” continues Wagner. “This, altogether, can give you everything you need to become a proper striker in the Premier League.”
Huddersfield under Wagner are a proper team, every player well chosen and well attuned to the manager’s pleasingly bold approach. That was already clear from the way they played their way out of the Championship and, at Selhurst Park, it meant they compared favourably with a Palace side that struggled to adapt to the style cultivated by Frank de Boer, the newly appointed manager whose first match could hardly have gone much worse.
Most tipsters make Huddersfield certainties for relegation but Wagner and his players are justifiably confident that they can confound the prophets of doom, as they did last season. “I know that we have a real chance to stay up,” says Wagner. “I knew this before this game. We are in the Premier League and we have a real chance and it’s up to us what we do out of it.”