Zidane finds his ‘fairy’: footballer who nearly quit for magic | OneFootball

Enzo Le Fée could have made a living deceiving people with his hands. In the end, he preferred to do it with his feet. Although, at 26, he still has both skills. The Sunderland midfielder has entered Zinedine Zidane’s radar for his first call-up with France.

And behind the new Les Bleus candidate lies a story that seems written precisely for his surname. Because fée means “fairy” in French. And Le Fée also happens to be a magician. Literally.

“I’m a magician. Yes, really,” the footballer admitted a few months ago in an interview with The Guardian. His specialty is card tricks, a hobby he picked up as a child and devoted so many hours to that he eventually reached a considerable level. “I practiced a lot when I was young, so I got pretty good,” he explained. Not the recently deceased Juan Tamariz, of course, but he could hold his own.

He still keeps his repertoire and now and then goes back to practicing it, although he admits he now feels a bit more embarrassed about performing as a magician in front of others. Even coincidence seems determined to keep playing along: a Premier sticker collection has dedicated a special card titled “Ta-Da!” to him this season, the British tantatachán, which obviously sounds worse. Yes, to Le Fée specifically. Out of dozens of possible footballers, the fairy who does magic tricks.

Zidane is looking for magic for France

The wordplay would be merely amusing if Le Fée had not also brought part of his repertoire onto the pitch. After a difficult spell at Roma, the Frenchman rediscovered his best form at Régis Le Bris’s Sunderland, the coach who had already worked with him from the age of 12 in the Lorient academy.

He first arrived on loan in January 2025, and his signing was later made permanent after promotion. Since then he has kept growing into one of the most inventive footballers in the English team. In Sunderland they have long been calling him “the little magician.”

His performances have also ended up catching Zidane’s attention. Le Fée appears among the roughly 50 footballers included in the broad preliminary list drawn up before the new manager announces his first final squad. It does not guarantee that he will be among the chosen ones, but it is the first step for a player who just a few months ago admitted that wearing the France shirt was one of his biggest goals. Now he must get past the final trick: surviving Zidane’s cut. That does not seem far-fetched for a magic specialist.

This article was translated into English by Artificial Intelligence. You can read the original version in 🇪🇸 here.