Estéban Lepaul aims to seize France chance after late rise and Giroud benchmark | OneFootball

At 26, Rennes forward Estéban Lepaul has his first France call-up and wants to make it count.

On Tuesday at Clairefontaine, the first player of the Zinédine Zidane era to face the media set out modest targets, from helping France win across four games against Türkiye, Belgium twice and Italy to earning minutes and, if it comes, a first goal. According to L'Équipe, he underlined that hard work brings rewards.

There is precedent for late arrivals. Olivier Giroud debuted at 25 on 11 November 2011 in a 1-0 win over the United States, then won the 2018 World Cup and 2021 Nations League and reached the 2022 final. His 57-goal record was overtaken this summer when Kylian Mbappé hit 10 at the tournament to reach 66 for France.

Wissam Ben Yedder also started at 25, finishing with 19 caps and three goals, while others had only fleeting cameos.

Having trained with Pierre Kalulu and Bradley Barcola in Lyon’s academy, he says the early jitters have gone and he can now express his game.

His turning point came in 2020, leaving Lyon’s set-up for Épinal in the fourth tier before moves to Orléans, back to Épinal in National, then Angers in Ligue 2 and Ligue 1, and finally Rennes. That year his father Fabrice, an Auxerre champion in 1996 whose career was ended by a 1997 crash, died at 43, and Lepaul frames his rise as a handover, noting that Fabrice stopped at 24, the age his own truly began.

Source: L'Équipe

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