BarcelonaMany of the players who still aspire to win the World Cup come from humble families. In many cases, these are children of immigrants who left home in search of a new life, as happens to the French or Moroccans. Some players, such as the Croatian Lovren and the French Camavinga, fled wars in the Balkans or Angola. And in the case of France goalkeeper Hugo Lloris, it was the paternal grandparents who fled a war. En aquest cas, de la Guerra Civil Espanyola, perquè eren catalans.
Hugo Lloris (Niça, 1986) is already the footballer who has defended the shirt of the French national team more times. It made its debut in the distant 2008 thanks to a technician who also has Catalan roots, Raymond Domenech, and little by little it has been making its way. He first surpassed Fabien Barthez as the goalkeeper who has played the most times in the French goal. He also passed current coach Didier Deschamps as the man who has worn the captain’s armband the most times. And after the game against England, he has already moved past Lilian Thuram to top the list of players with the most official caps, 143. And now he aims to revalidate the title achieved in 2018 in Moscow. No national team has achieved this since Brazil in 1962.
But Lloris’ story is different from that of his teammates. If many of the players were born into immigrant families in modest neighborhoods, the goalkeeper has never lacked for anything because his father, Luc Lloris, was a banker who made his fortune in Monte Carlo, in the Principality of Monaco . The Lloris lived in an affluent neighborhood in the west of Nice, where both Hugo and his brother faced the dilemma of deciding whether to choose tennis or football as their sport. The current Tottenham Hotspur goalkeeper was good at both sports as a youngster and had offers to take up the racket at Des Combes Tennis Club. But he opted for football and trained at Nice before moving to Olympique de Lyon, where he would make a name for himself. And always, by his side, there was his father, who was in charge of managing the first contracts and negotiating for him. In a football where representatives have more and more weight, the Lloris took time to have one because the father was in charge of the financial part of the son’s career. And he has always trusted his father’s judgment to invest the money he has earned.
Lloris’ parents were children of the French Republic. People who had built their careers to make money, who believed in meritocracy and discipline. If the father was a banker specializing in asset management, Christine, the mother, was a lawyer in an English firm based in Monaco. This is how they met, managing foreign investments in the small Principality, but being clear that they wanted to make a life in Nice. They wanted their children to play sports, but they did not expect that both Hugo and his younger brother Gautier would end up as professional footballers. When Nice asked the parents to sign the young goalkeeper, who was then playing in a neighborhood club called Cedac, the parents said no because the priority was studies. The insistence of Nice and the boy, who already wanted to be a goalkeeper, forced them to come to an agreement: they would take Hugo to train in Nice as long as he continued to study with good grades at the school chosen by his parents. “I am disciplined and I owe it to my parents. I studied in the morning and trained in the evening. And at the weekend I had a game, but also revision classes and languages that my parents wanted me to do,” explained Lloris, who cried mother’s death a few years ago due to an illness. At the age of 17, the young goalkeeper passed the selection process with good marks and a few days later he was European under-19 champion with the French national team.
The memory of the mother
When the first offer to have a professional contract with Nice arrived, the parents for the first time left it up to the son to make a decision: go to university or be a footballer. He chose the second, but on the condition that it was the parents who controlled the contracts and always advised him. Family has always been key in the career of a man who remembers his mother as an example, a woman who made her way in an environment where almost all of her co-workers were men. Christine continued to work even in the hospital, when she was already very ill. “I always said you had to work and look to the future,” argued Lloris when he decided to play a league game three days after his mother’s funeral. They didn’t score a goal.
Lloris, who has been playing in England for years at Tottenham Hotspur, has become one of France’s heroes. The perfect captain, the son-in-law that so many French people would want because he is a man with few scandals, beyond one positive for drinking too much after dinner in London and, more recently, for the decision not to wear a favor bracelet of the rights of the LGBTI community. “I hope that the immigrants who arrive in France will integrate and respect the values of our state, so I have to respect the traditions of Qatar even if I don’t agree with them,” he justified himself. When his city, Nice, was the scene of a serious terrorist attack in 2016, he went there to be in the front row at the tributes to the victims alongside the mayor, the same as the ‘he had married in a civil ceremony at the Town Hall with Marine, whom he met at high school. Both have taken part in other events to remember those killed in the attack on the Paseo des Anglais in Nice and also donate money to a foundation that researches cancer and helps children who have been orphaned. And with the money he earns, he has invested in one start-up called MyCoach dedicated to football coaches. Lloris has not been able to study as his parents wanted, but he has become a future businessman as he decides whether he wants to continue in football when he retires.
