Paris: Football’s greatest talent factory
The Documentary Podcast
BBC
4.3 • 2.7K Ratings
🗓️ 21 January 2024
⏱️ 51 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
In the France World Cup squad, 11 were from Paris and there were also players born in the city's suburbs representing Morocco, Tunisia, Senegal, Qatar, Cameroon, Ghana, Portugal and Germany. What is it about Paris's banlieues that helps create such amazing football talent? We go inside the clubs that created Kylian Mbappe, William Saliba and Moussa Diaby, and speak to the coaches who helped launch their incredible careers. We also meet some of the street footballers who turned into international stars. We investigate why Paris Saint-Germain has often missed out on the talented players on its doorstep and hear about the dangers posed by agents, scouts and pushy parents.
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | World of Secrets, Season 2, investigates allegations surrounding one of the most powerful religious figures of the 21st century, TB Joshua. |
| 0:10.0 | Search for World of Secrets wherever you get your BBC Podcasts. |
| 0:13.7 | Welcome to Paris. |
| 0:19.7 | There is nowhere on the planet right now that's producing more top |
| 0:25.4 | professional footballers than this great city and its suburbs. I'm John Bennett |
| 0:30.7 | and if you don't believe me just cast your mind back to the last |
| 0:33.8 | men's world cup. 30 players. Yes 30 players at that tournament were born or |
| 0:40.1 | bred in the vicinity of France's capital. That's won in every 25. |
| 0:45.6 | Compare that to two other hotbeds of youth football. Greater London, |
| 0:50.0 | just eight World Cup players and Sao Paulo only 12. |
| 0:54.0 | And not all of those 30 players were representing France in Qatar. |
| 1:01.0 | Far from it. |
| 1:02.0 | They were Parisian players in eight of the other national teams at the World Cup in the Morocco, Tunisia, Senegal, Senegal, Senegal, Germany and Qatar squads. |
| 1:21.0 | So I'm here to find out why this part of the world is producing more top footballers than anywhere else. This is Paris, football's greatest talent factory. |
| 1:25.0 | In the next hour we'll relive the football filled |
| 1:30.4 | childhoods of two African stars from the suburbs of Paris. |
| 1:34.8 | There's three ways to make it in the Bollywood. |
| 1:39.1 | Street, music, or football. |
| 1:43.0 | We'll head inside the clubs that produced France International's William Saliba and |
| 1:48.0 | Killian and Bape. |
| 1:49.0 | He always wanted to play in the living room and he said to me don't tell my father don't |
| 1:53.8 | tell my mother they don't want me to play in the living room but don't tell him |
... |
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