Mateo: I’ll never be able to thank my youth coaches enough
French international Clara Mateo speaks to FIFA about how her football passion was ignited and her inspirational first coaches.
Clara Mateo opens up on her early days in football
France star discusses inspirational coach who passed away aged 2022
Mateo now a role model for aspiring footballers in her region
"We all got on very well right from the beginning – mind you, we all knew one another already from the school playground…" Unlike Argentina's Lorena Benitez, who had to pretend she was a boy in order to be able to play football, Clara Mateo was allowed to play straight away in a boys’ team at her first-ever club. The France midfielder was just seven years old when she joined Union Sportive Lucenne, a club in the Nantes suburb of Sainte-Luce just outside Brittany in north-west France. Since then, she has "gradually moved up through all the levels" to find herself on the top rung of the ladder, at the FIFA Women’s World Cup Australia & New Zealand 2023™. In an interview with FIFA, she reflects on her early days at USL and how she then moved on via ESOFV La Roche-sur-Yon in Vendee to FCF Juvisy Essonne, which became part of Paris FC in 2017.
"I originally played football just because I enjoyed it and to have some fun with my team-mates," says the 25-year-old, who has made her way through all of the youth levels for France, from the U-16s to the U-23s.
Of playing at her first Women’s World Cup, she added: "First it was a dream, then it became a goal, and I’m extremely proud and delighted to be here today."
When FIFA spoke with Alban Duhamel, her former coach at Sainte-Luce, he was not willing to take any credit for Clara’s success, saying: "I don’t know whether we really had that much of an impact on her progress. We were just one of many steps along the way for her."
For Clara however, that particular step was a crucial one in her footballing career.
"They maybe don’t realise [the impact they had]. All of the coaches I had at Sainte-Luce played their part. It’s when you’re young that you learn the basics of football and technique, and if I am where I am today, it’s in part thanks to them and I’m very grateful,” she says of Duhamel and his assistant Paul Annereau, who died of cancer in 2012 at the age of just 22, who were the first people to coach her.
"When Paulo passed away, it was a tough time. He was always enthusiastic and gave everything he’d got. I’ve got some lovely memories from back then and I’ll never be able to thank them enough for everything they did for us."
Clara has gone on to become an inspiration for the next generation of girls at Sainte-Luce and the surrounding region, who now have a role model to look up to.
"I recently went back to Sainte-Luce and saw that there were more and more girls who were taking up the game,” she said. “I was so happy to see that and it was actually quite emotional – they had stars in their eyes when they saw me."
The forward knows that she will be able to count on the support of those girls and from the rest of the club throughout the Women’s World Cup.
While she was a starter in the 0-0 draw against Jamaica, she was an unused substitute for the 2-1 win over Brazil on Saturday, which got France back on track in Group F.
On Les Bleues' Women's World Cup ambitions, Mateo added: "We know that we’ve got lots of people behind us. We’re going to make sure that we give it our all for France, for the jersey and for everyone back home."