It is an old standard of a question, one beloved of match programmes and teen football magazines. But sometimes you want to ask it. If you had not become a footballer, what would you have done? Steed Malbranque’s answer is that he would have tried to make a racket at tennis. This is despite the fact the average tennis professional is a good seven inches taller than him.
“I know,” smiles the Frenchman. “Maybe I wouldn’t have had the quality or the physique, but I’d still have given it a try.”
Andre Agassi, after all, is big despite being (relatively) small. Agassi, you suspect, is exactly the sort of player Malbranque would have become. Just as the American wears opponents down with his relentlessness on court, so Malbranque is impossible to quell on the football pitch.
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| Fulham midfielder Steed Manbranque |
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Against West Brom last Wednesday it was typical. Three goals to Fulham, all scored in the last 20 minutes as the opposition tired, with Malbranque’s input buzzing through them all. For one he provided the cross, for another it was a pass and for the remaining goal it was the finish itself, a sure stroke of the right boot from the penalty spot.
A statistical analysis of Fulham's leading players and the area concerning Malbranque reads like the report card of a favourite pupil. Scoring? He is top of the class. Shooting? The same. Tackling? Second place. Passing? Right up there. Crossing? Top again. It is not bad for somebody who, having turned 23 last month, is still relatively new to his studies.
“I like being involved in as much of the game as possible,” he said. “It’s an attitude I’ve had since I was little. When I play I never really ask, ‘Why am I doing this?’ I do what my instincts say and if I see the chance to shoot, I shoot, if there is a tackle to be made, I tackle.
“What is a coincidence is the fact I’ve scored a lot of goals recently (eight in six games and 13 in total for the season, all from midfield). I haven’t been working on anything special. I’ve just been playing the way I always have played.” There are questions about how much longer Fulham can keep Malbranque. Can a medium-sized club ever keep a big player? There has been a downbeat tone to the reporting of the West London side this season, and losing Malbranque in the summer, as has been speculated, would take the whole thing subterranean.
It is felt the midfielder might want to leave to enhance his chances of playing for the French senior side, having represented his country at all levels up from under-14, but here is some good Fulham news at last. “I don’t agree that I have to go somewhere else so I can get picked for France,” said Malbranque. “Steve Marlet is with us at Fulham and he is a regular in the squad.
“There’s still time for me, I’m very young. The only thing I can do at this stage is play well for Fulham and then it’s up to the manager of the national side to decide what to do. I’m happy with the life I have in London and I have a very good feeling at this club.”
Maybe Fulham’s foul weather will pass. At their training ground in Motspur Park last Friday lunchtime it was 13 degrees and felt like the first day of spring. Even the Japanese girls who hang at its gates through frost and snow to glimpse their compatriot Junichi Inamoto looked a little less forlorn. Inside the players’ canteen, where Malbranque smiled through the enquiries and Louis Saha sat reading a newspaper with a member of the catering staff, there was sunshine too.
A decision from Uefa on moves by Lyon to have the club banned from transfer activities because of £2.5m still owed from the signing of Marlet (Fulham are withholding the payment, claiming agents working for Lyon acted irregularly in the deal) had just been unexpectedly postponed. There was even a story in the newspapers that Mohamed al-Fayed, the Fulham chairman, might offer manager Jean Tigana a new contract in summer.
All in all, the ambience gave the lie to comments Marlet made on his website that there was “conflict” between Tigana and al-Fayed and “no big joy” at the club. “I can only tell you how I find things,” said Malbranque, “and there is a really good spirit among the players. Maybe it’s easier for us because we only have to think about what needs to be done on the pitch and in the past few weeks we’ve been concentrating on an objective, which is getting enough points to stay in the Premiership. It might be different for the people behind the scenes who have to think about money and the future of the club, but as players we can’t do anything about these things.
“As for the manager, we have to wait until the end of the season to see what happens, but we’ve been able to forget about that situation and have gone out to do our best in every match.”
Matches, he added, are more enjoyable now relegation’s dread hand is no longer tapping Fulham’s shoulder. Beating West Brom took the club to 33 points in a season where 36 looks enough to guarantee safety and tomorrow’s derby with Tottenham can be viewed with greater relaxation. There is also an FA Cup replay against Burnley on Wednesday where, if successful, the club will be into the last eight of the competition with a draw against Watford. “The only problem is playing twice in three days,” said Malbranque, “but in England, once you have the shock of your first Christmas programme, you get used to these things.”
Roger Propos, Fulham’s French fitness coach, interrupts to check Malbranque was able to train with the rest of the squad. He had been working in the swimming pool to recover from a thigh knock sustained against West Brom.
It was a big attraction coming to a club with so many Frenchmen on their staff. “It made me think coming to a new country, even though I was 21, might not be so difficult,” he said. And in Christian Damiano, Tigana’s assistant, Malbranque was reunited with a mentor. Damiano coached him in the French national youth set-up from the age of 16 and he captained France in the 1999 Under-18 youth championships under Damiano’s management. “He’s a great trainer and knows me well,” Malbranque said.
Damiano, for his part, has the utmost faith in his protégé. He and Tigana were unabashed when commentators questioned their decision to pay £4.5m for an uncapped, and in England, unheard-of youngster. In an interview for a book, The French Revolution, Damiano outlined the levels he expects Malbranque to attain. “I’ve known Steed since he was a teenager and I can tell you he is destined to do great things,” said the coach. “He is incredibly complete. He works hard, he’s willing to progress and he can pass and score from central midfield. He is Fulham’s Gianfranco Zola and one day he will be France’s new Zinedine Zidane.”
Malbranque finds this “very flattering” but says “there’s no player I want to follow. I’ve always tried to do things my way and I’ve got to concentrate on who I am and in doing better in every game.”
There was one footballer whose talents he did long to have as a boy, and that was the Belgian international of Italian extraction Enzo Scifo. Malbranque has an Italian mother and was born and spent the first four years of his life in Belgium, although his father, who eventually moved the family to Lyon so he could look for work, is French. Mum and dad came over to live with him when he first moved to London, though he copes without them now.
He was called Steed, not because of The Avengers, but because it was an unusual name and they wanted him to be different. They need not have worried: football always made him stand out. At 18, Malbranque was a phenomenon in French domestic football, running Lyon’s midfield alongside playmaker Vikash Dhorasoo, and lifting the side to second in the championship.
In December 1998, Arsenal tried to acquire him amid controversy — Malbranque was not old enough to have signed a professional contract with Lyon and could have moved for a small compensation fee, the same situation that arose when Nicolas Anelka went to Highbury from Paris Saint Germain. But Malbranque rebuffed Arsène Wenger: “I felt at 18 it was a little bit too early to go to a club as big as that. I wanted to make an impression on the French First Division before I did anything else and I looked at Arsenal and they had a lot of midfielders in their team, great players like Patrick Vieira and Emmanuel Petit. I didn’t see many opportunities. When Fulham came along, it was a better option because it was important I went somewhere I could play.”
The Premiership has made him “more combative and confident”. Even if he does move, recognition for France may have to wait: Zidane, Robert Pires and Sylvain Wiltord lie ahead of him as candidates for right midfield and the France manager Jacques Santini is the same coach who arrived at Lyon and dropped Malbranque, the season following his breakthrough campaign.
He never seriously considered tennis, you know. “When you’re young, you don’t think what you’re going to become. I just kept moving up a level at football. It just sort of took me.” Fans of technique and endeavour must be glad. The old game has a friend in Steed.