All eyes are on Eduardo Camavinga right now following his call up to the full France squad, but several other stars of the early weeks of the Ligue 1 Uber Eats season will feature for the French Under-21s this weekend and look set for huge futures. Ligue1.com takes a look...
As international football comes out of a long hiatus this weekend, Sylvain Ripoll’s France Under-21 side make the long trip east to play Georgia away on Friday and Azerbaijan on Monday in two key qualifiers for next year’s Euro.
Here are three standout performers from the domestic campaign so far to look out for in the coming days, and the years ahead:
Benoît Badiashile (AS Monaco)
The imposing 1.92m tall centre-back, who is just 19, has been brought into the Under-21 squad and is in line to win his first cap at this level after Dayot Upamecano of RB Leipzig was called up to the full squad.
It is reward for an outstanding start to this season for the coveted Limoges-born defender, who has excelled at the other end of the pitch in Monaco’s opening two Ligue 1 Uber Eats matches. He scored their equaliser in a 2-2 draw with Stade de Reims on the opening weekend and then fired in the only goal of a 1-0 victory at FC Metz in their last outing.
But it is for his qualities in defence that Niko Kovac has selected the left-footed teenager, who is hoping to form a solid partnership at the back with new signing Axel Disasi and help the principality side challenge towards the top of the table once more.
Watch: Benoît Badiashile's winning goal for Monaco last weekend
Nevertheless, Badiashile - whose elder brother Loïc, a goalkeeper, is also on Monaco’s books - has impressed enough since first breaking into the Monaco team as a 17-year-old during Thierry Henry’s brief and ill-fated spell as coach. That is despite Kovac already being the fourth coach he has played under at the Stade Louis II.
Now he is forever being linked to a transfer abroad, with Real Madrid, Manchester United and Bayer Leverkusen among the clubs most recently linked with an approach. Stade Rennais FC were also credited with an interest in the summer. Yet Monaco will be in no rush to sell a player whose contract runs until 2024.
Maxence Caqueret (Olympique Lyonnais)
If 2020 has been challenging for most, the slight 20-year-old midfielder Caqueret will be able to look back at this as his breakthrough year at the top level. Having emerged into the first-team at his hometown club Lyon, Caqueret has now been called up to the France Under-21 squad for the first time.
Caqueret was 18 when he made his first-team debut in a Coupe de France tie, but it was in November last year that he was handed a first appearance in Ligue 1 by new coach Rudi Garcia. With Lucas Tousart leaving and Thiago Mendes struggling for form, he has gone on to become an increasingly pivotal part of the OL side in 2020, including playing in all three of their UEFA Champions League knockout matches in August, against Juventus, Manchester City and Bayern Munich. Caqueret certainly did not look out of place, and with Houssem Aouar possibly set to leave the club soon, he is likely to have an even bigger role to play in the season ahead.
“He is a player who is capable of going to press at the feet of the opposition to win the ball back. He has good vision and he can play one-touch. He is invaluable,” said Garcia recently of Caqueret.
All going to plan, Caqueret will no doubt leave Lyon one day himself. But for now his aim will be to tie down a berth in the midfield at the club he joined as an 11-year-old, while also adding more brawn to go with the brains.
“There is no doubt I don’t have a great physique compared to certain Ligue 1 players. But I try to compensate with my intelligence, to do as well as possible when it comes to winning the ball back and playing the right pass,” he told Le Monde.
Amine Gouiri (OGC Nice)
Lyon’s academy is so prolific that not all the exciting talents to emerge there can make it in the first team. So often they move on to enjoy success elsewhere, and that is what Amine Gouiri is hoping for after he decided to leave OL for Nice in July for a reported fee of €7 million.
Like Caqueret, Gouiri is 20. In fact he is precisely one day younger than his old club colleague. Gouiri also hails from near Lyon, although he has already played three times for France at Under-21 level, scoring on his debut in a friendly against Albania in Amiens a year ago.
But Gouiri did not get the first-team opportunities he craved from Rudi Garcia at Lyon. Having made his top-team debut as a 17-year-old in late 2017, his progress was slowed by a cruciate knee ligament injury in 2018, but he had hoped to do better last season than one start in a Coupe de la Ligue tie and a single minute in Ligue 1.
Watch: Gouri's debut brace for Nice
“He is a pure talent. He knows where the goal is,” Lyon sporting director Juninho told Le Progrès. “He came to see me and said he needed to play and wanted to leave. I can understand that. Sometimes you get the feeling you are letting go of a young player who could do a job for you, but maybe the time was right.”
His decision to move to Nice - where Loïc Rémy and Alassane Pléa previously flourished after leaving Lyon - is already paying off. Coming in from the left of the attack, Gouiri scored both goals - fine goals too - on his debut as Nice came from behind to beat RC Lens 2-1, and was again in the line-up for their 2-0 win at RC Strasbourg Alsace last weekend.
“His best position is on the left-hand side of the penalty area. He is clinical there. When he comes back inside onto his right foot, he is very good, as his two goals against Lens showed,” Lionel Rouxel, his former youth coach, told L’Equipe.