Meet the nicest guy in football: Rudraneil Sengupta writes on N’Golo Kante

The ongoing Euro 2024 is proving to be a wonderful coming-of-age tournament for some of the world’s best young footballing talent. But, rather delightfully, it is also throwing up surprises at the other end of the age range.

I’d like to start by talking about perhaps the nicest player of them all, an experienced hand who has absolutely lit up the Euros: N’Golo Kante.

The French midfielder is 33, and was off the French squad for two years before he was called up for this competition by Didier Deschamps.

This is a player who was offloaded by Chelsea last year, because, despite being a club legend, he was seen as over the hill. Kante then joined the Saudi League, now the pre-retirement move of choice for the stars of Europe. Kante, everyone thought, was done.

Far from it. He has proven to be absolutely vintage. He seems to have lost none of his skills, sharpness, speed or stamina. He is everywhere on the pitch — stealing a ball here, making a block there, swooping in to make an interception, striding into the opposition third to make a telling pass.

In the first two matches France played, it was not Kylian Mbappe or any of the others in the star-studded young squad who were named man of the match, but the shy, ever-smiling Kante. He is top of France’s list when it comes to distance covered on the pitch, and only behind Mbappe and winger Ousmane Dembele when it comes to speed.

In one instance, against Austria, Kante made a bedazzling interception: winger Patrick Wimmer had cleared all of the French defence on a counterattack when a tiny figure flashed past him, taking the ball off his feet.

“He has four lungs,” said Mbappe.

“It’s like playing against three players,” said Mbappe’s strike partner, Marcus Thuram.

If Kante is irrepressible on the field, he is an outlier off it. He grew up poor, in the banlieues or suburbs of Paris, sometimes helping his father collect scraps from garbage heaps. And yet, when he signed his contract with Leicester at 24, he bought himself a second-hand Mini Cooper, a car he drove for years. And a car that stood out for the tiny misfit it was, among the Ferraris and Porsches in the Chelsea parking lot.

The story that perhaps captures Kante’s personality best involves a missed train, night prayers and a fan. In 2018, already a World Cup winner, Kante played a game for Chelsea on a Saturday night (a 4-1 win) before heading to the St Pancras station in London to take the Eurostar home to Paris for the weekend. He missed his train, and went to a nearby mosque for the evening prayer. At the mosque, an Arsenal fan recognised him, and plucked up the courage to ask if he would like to join him for dinner at his home. Kante agreed, spending hours with the man’s family and friends, playing FIFA on their PlayStation, and watching analysis of the game he had just played on TV, over a dinner of chicken curry and rice.

In a world where football superstars live lives of private jets and island mansions, Kante’s rootedness is precious and rare.

Moving on, elsewhere on the roster of players defying the clock, is the rock who remains at the centre of Portugal’s defence: Pepe. At 41, he is now the oldest player ever to play at a Euro. And, on the other side of the field for Portugal is the second-oldest player at the Euros: Cristiano Ronaldo. At 39, he is half as fast and a lot less accurate than he used to be, but he is still making those foxy runs, with a passing accuracy of over 95%.

On the German squad, Manuel Neuer, 38, has made some tremendous saves and is as acrobatic and powerful as ever. And Croatia has Luka Modric, who is 38 (he’ll be 39 in September) and still defining their play with his relentless presence at midfield.

While we celebrate the 17- to 22-year-olds, it is exhilarating to see veterans play against each other too, refusing, somewhat, to age.

(To reach Rudraneil Sengupta with feedback, email rudraneil@gmail.com)