The best foreigner in the history of Club Brugge, Jean-Pierre Papin has left behind much more than an imprint. The proof is that 33 years after his departure, no one has forgotten JPP. Interview with a myth.
Symbol of an era, Jean-Pierre Papin, it’s old-fashioned football. That of Bernard Tapie, Silvio Berlusconi, Thierry Roland, of the “Guignols” generation as a whole. Football in which the frizzy red hair of the former OM striker, future Ballon d’Or 1991, quadruple champion of France, double champion of Italy, winner of the Champions League, the UEFA Cup and the Belgian Cup (!), Did not even make a mark.
At the time, the three most famous consonants in France in the early 1990s were expressed mainly with the feet. Suddenly “papinades” – these improbable volley attempts that made his legend – Jean-Pierre Papin definitely brought football into the screens. In arcade mode only, and with the good grace of the beginnings of football on Canal +. In the context of the time, JPP was a little more than a number 9, a little less than a diva – crossed out by Eric Cantona on the scale of starification – but the equal of the greatest. Interview with a myth.
Is it true that you started as a goalkeeper?
Jean-Pierre Papin: I mainly started as a libero. But it is true that one day at school I helped out on purpose. Finally when I say “at school”, it is not entirely true. It turns out that we had a team of friends and that initially we were playing in the playground, but that we ended up signing up for a small local championship. Next to me, I was already playing in a club and I was combining the two. One day, I have a match and the goalkeeper is not there, suddenly, I simply offered to help out. Result, I took seven. The same day, in stride, I had a training match with my club from Jeumont (where he will officiate between 1970 and 1978, note). I was still playing Libero at the time, but I was so hateful that I planted five.
“I counted, I hit the ball more than 1.6 million times.”
You once said there was nothing spontaneous about your game. It was just work. Hours of training spent doing the same thing. Do you envy or have envied the spontaneity of certain goal scorers?
Papin: I liked Gerd Müller and Joe Jordan, a Scotsman from Manchester United. More generally, I was very English and German football. Because on TV, I watched “foreign goals” on Stade 2. And that all the goals I saw outside the area, like a volley, I had the impression that it only happened there, in fact. The best part is that I too went through this section when I was in Bruges! I loved seeing myself in Stage 2!
And on the spontaneity of the rough gesture?
Papin: When you work every day, you perfect your gesture. I counted, I hit the ball more than 1.6 million times. At the rate of 200 keystrokes per day for most of my training career. For 346 goals, which is a relatively low ratio in the end. But whatever it is, what you have to remember is that all this work, you do it to avoid thinking about the match. To make you believe that what you do, the goals you write down, you do it instinctively. Nothing could be further from the truth. It was after my career that I understood. By reviewing my goals, by seeing others. The races you do, the positioning of the body at the time of impact with the ball, it’s anything but instinct, it’s work. Hours of work. And it gets lost very quickly.
To hear you, it looks like you are one of those who think that we are not born scorer, but that we become. Don’t you believe in innate abilities?
Papin: Yes, I think we are born with certain qualities. I had the goal in my blood. I sincerely mean it. We have it or we don’t have it. But like any gift, it can be worked. As a child, my father taught me how to hit a ball correctly. Very, very young, I could send a balloon to 40 meters without any problem. Honestly, I had a perfect typing technique. This is also why I started Libero. Because in youth teams, we often put the one who hits the hardest behind. And then, each time there was a free kick, I obviously lit. The guards were six feet tall, I just had to put the ball in the ceiling and it was good.
“In Bruges, I was already doing goal to goal with Philippe Vande Walle. We were sending caramels. “
After, for the rest, I really started to work in front of goal when I arrived at OM … (He thinks) Although it is false, in fact. In Bruges, I already made “goals to goals” with Philippe Vande Walle. He, too, hit the ball well. Like me, he was able to send the ball 50 meters effortlessly. Suddenly, we put the moving goals a little further than the surface and we sent caramels. The rules were simple, we were hitters and goalkeepers in turn and it could last like that for 45 or 50 minutes.
Your first season at OM (86-87) is not so obvious. At the time, supporters took you in flu and called you JPP for the first time. For “J’en Peux Plus”, initially. Because you missed too many opportunities, right?
Papin: Countless numbers. I harvested a maximum. However, I put 13 goals that season, but I should have scored 30 more. The problem is that when I arrived at OM, nobody tried to understand why I had scored so many goals in Valenciennes and then in Bruges. I still remember my last press conference at the end of my first season at OM where I told journalists that they will never call me again “I can’t take it anymore”. It was from there that I started working with Alain Casanova, our goalkeeper, after training. For six years, we ended each session with a 40-minute rab where I turned it on from all sides. This is why I dedicated my Ballon d’Or to her in 1991.
How did six and a half years earlier, a future Ballon d’Or, end up signing in Bruges?
Papin: We didn’t have an extraordinary team with Valenciennes, but we were making results. In 1985, we even went very close to the rise in Division 1. That’s how Bruges started to take an interest in me. That season, they came to see me twelve times! And the last three, it was Raoul Lambert in person who came to scout me. Each time I scored. Suddenly, he considered me as his successor. In the process, there is this meeting between leaders of the two clubs. And in fact, it was not a difficult choice to make. Basically, I was told: “If you don’t sign in Bruges, the club will close the door.”
And anyway, I didn’t want to do like everyone else and sign in Lille, Lens or Auxerre. The stranger spoke to me more than France. And at the time, Bruges was still a club that emerged from a Champions League final a few years earlier at Wembley. In 1978 exactly. I was 15, it was my youth. And above all there was my father. Which I systematically contradicted. Because one day my grandmother told me that my father had always made the wrong choices. So when he said yes, I said no. He thought white, I thought black. I’m not kidding, it’s true. I went to see him, I asked his opinion. He told me: “Bruges, especially not. There has never been a Frenchman who has succeeded in Belgium. This is not a country for you.” Well, well, I signed in Bruges …
Marc Degryse, Jan Ceulemans, where do you locate them in your personal pantheon?
Papin: Degryse was still above all my competitor at the time. But all the guys I met there, it’s still the beginning of the adventure. Hugo Broos, Alex Querter, Luc Beyens, I will never forget them all. Bruges is without doubt the most beautiful stage of my career. Because without Bruges, there would not have been everything else. Honestly, I would not have liked to come back afterwards. I came to kick off, to attend one or the other European Cup match, to receive my title of best foreign player in the history of the Club, but it is in another role that I would have liked to see come back. Unfortunately, this has not been possible so far. Who knows? I’m only 56 …
“The first time I met Platini was at the training center for the French team. It was 11 pm, I couldn’t sleep, so I started to play pool. J was alone, and Platini arrived. “
Thanks to Bruges, you will join the France team in extremis for the 1986 World Cup in Mexico. You made your debut in February 1986 against Northern Ireland. What did the Blues represent to you at that time?
Papin: A dream! Because of bad circumstances, I never played with Zidane, but I played with my idol, Michel Platini. The first time I met him was at the France team training center. In the evening, as I couldn’t sleep, I started to play billiards. It was 11 p.m. I was alone and Platini arrived. Dressed in Italian with a large overcoat that reached him at the bottom of the ankles, he took off his coat and took a pool cue. But I was panicked. I did not know what to do. It looked like a five year old kid who saw a lollipop for the first time. What moment!
You once said that you started scoring a lot of goals the day you became less selfish. Yet, fundamentally, a goal scorer like you is above all a selfish being, right?
Papin: I believe that the more the years passed, the less I was. Because I was associated with players for whom it was as important as me to score goals. Klaus Allofs, who was my big brother, Chris Waddle, Eric Cantona, Abedi Pelé … In Marseille, I was no longer alone, there were four of us who had to score. Of course, it was I who scored the most, but we were all capable of it and we had to please everyone. It was important for the group spirit. And if I wanted to score goals, I also knew that I needed others and that it was in my interest somewhere to spare the susceptibilities of each other. To pass at the right time, to leave a penalty for one, a free kick to the other. Even if it was sometimes complicated for the ego.
As a coach, you had a guy like Jérémy Perbet under your orders in Strasbourg. With us, in Belgium, he was a hit. A real cool-headed scorer. How do you stack goals when you don’t have above average intrinsic qualities?
Papin: Jérémy’s problem at the time was that he was a little heavy. He had trouble getting around. But we could see that he had this address in front of the goal. I once talked about it with Enzo Scifo who also had him under his orders in Mons. Jérémy was not an average player, he was more than that, but scorers like that are guys who need to be surrounded. Basically, two centralizers who give him balloons. Perbet is a goal scorer formatted in a certain way of scoring goals. Like a Stéphane Guivarc’h or a Pippo Inzaghi, they are finishers. But it’s players, if you block their wingers, normally, they no longer exist. And then, in another register, there are the space scorers like me or Jürgen Klinsmann and Marco Van Basten. Guys who need to run, to provoke one on one, but who, too, only lived for the goal.
Like Enzo Scifo, another soccer legend from the end of the last century, you quickly grilled as a coach with unfortunate experiences in Strasbourg, Châteauroux and Lens. Do you feel like you are blacklisted in the profession today?
Papin: Yes, like Enzo, indeed. But I do not regret having started in smaller clubs. You shouldn’t think that all great players become great coaches. I wanted to give myself time to learn. The problem is that we forgive the very old players less. People think too quickly that we have a magic wand … But it still tickles me to train. I would like to, but where and who? Today in football you need a good agent. Football is a circle. And when you leave the circle, it’s very complicated to go back there. But I would have liked to have had one last challenge.
Are there encounters that marked the player you have become? Coaches? You knew the cream of the crop at the time. From Henk Houwaart to Franz Beckenbauer via Aimé Jacquet, Raymond Goethals, Tomislav Ivic, Fabio Capello, Giovanni Trapattoni or Otto Rehhagel?
Papin: Trapattoni and Capello were real coaches. I appreciate the Italian culture, their way of managing. Rigor, but also a certain way of distinguishing things.
“The Guignols, I experienced it very badly. It was impossible to live it well. It was mean. Every day, I took a missile.”
The coaches weren’t the most successful. In Milan, you compete in two Champions League finals, but you do not start either as a holder. For the famous 4-0 against Barça, you are squarely in the stands … How did you experience it?
Papin: It was the philosophy of the club. And that’s what I didn’t immediately understand. If I had accepted it, I would not have left for Bayern in the summer of 1994 after only two seasons. But now, in Milan, the club had 30 players and juggled with this incredible squad according to the competitions, matches, injuries. It was a management that hurt the ego when you were not playing. Sometimes for three weeks … Over there, I was one of the 30. The fact is that we are a few months before the Bosman judgment, and clubs are only entitled to three foreigners on the match sheet. I may have been the 1991 Golden Ball, but we were three Golden Balls with Gullit and Van Basten. To which you could also add Rijkaard, Savicevic and Boban. Today, we would play six at the same time, it would be madness, at the time, it was not possible.
At the time, you may not be winning the Champions League with OM, but you are in the spotlight. The captain of the France team, the best French player of your generation. We could see your head everywhere. In TV ads, in the newspapers, in the Guignols too. How did you experience it?
Papin: The Guignols, I experienced it badly. Very bad. It was impossible to live it well. It was mean. People made fun of me, a lot of my complicity with Cantona and overall of the image I was sending back. In short, every day, I took a missile, the equivalent of a knife stuck in the back because I was made to say anything. I knew people at Canal, I tried to interfere so that they calm down a bit, but as soon as I intervened, I took it even more full. It changed a lot when they learned that I had problems with my disabled daughter. There, they delayed a bit. It was paradoxical, because I could hate them on many aspects, but I was also aware that it was thanks to them that I had become so popular. Somewhere, the Guignols brought me into people’s homes. I don’t forget it either. You have to realize that at the time, the Guignols had the President of the Republic elected. Chirac, in 1995, with the apple, it’s them. He is at the bottom in the polls, but they created the character. At the time, there was no internet and somewhere, I think people were more attached to fiction than to reality. And then, the years passed. There was Virenque, Barthez … I was glad it was no longer me (laughs).
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ESolVstGXd8
You scored your last goal in Ligue 1 with Bordeaux in March 1998. But you continued to play at a small level until 2004, at Cap Ferret, at 41 years old … So, scoring was a drug, you didn’t want to stop you?
Papin: I have long regretted having missed this 1998 World Cup at home. It would have been such a perfect ending for me. The problem is that the last year, in Bordeaux, I was not the holder all the time and Aimé Jacquet had been very clear, he had said that he would only take the holders. So it was normal that I was not there. Thereafter, I still had this need to play. No more training. Besides, I didn’t train. I took my boat on Sunday morning, I joined Cap Ferret, just in front of my house. We played in small bleds against amateurs. But the “stadiums” were full. Sometimes 2,000 people. People came to see me. It was a bit of my farewell tour. I lived three magnificent seasons, we went up three division times, I scored 130 goals. It was my little corner of oxygen. We played with friends, we did not take the lead.
Interview by Maurice Brun
Symbol of an era, Jean-Pierre Papin, it’s old-fashioned football. That of Bernard Tapie, Silvio Berlusconi, Thierry Roland, of the “Guignols” generation as a whole. Football in which the frizzy red hair of the former OM striker, future Ballon d’Or 1991, quadruple champion of France, double champion of Italy, winner of the Champions League, the UEFA Cup and the Belgian Cup (!), Did not even make a mark. At the time, the three most famous consonants of the hexagon of the early 1990s were expressed mainly with the feet. With “papinades” – these improbable volley attempts that made his legend – Jean-Pierre Papin definitely brought football into the screens. In arcade mode only, and with the good grace of the beginnings of football on Canal +. In the context of the time, JPP was a little more than a number 9, a little less than a diva – crossed out by Eric Cantona on the scale of starification – but the equal of the greatest. Interview with a myth. Is it true that you started as a goalkeeper? Jean-Pierre Papin: I mainly started as a libero. But it is true that one day at school I helped out on purpose. Finally when I say “at school”, it is not entirely true. It turns out that we had a team of friends and that initially we were playing in the playground, but that we ended up signing up for a small local championship. Next to me, I was already playing in a club and I was combining the two. One day, I have a match and the goalkeeper is not there, suddenly, I simply offered to help out. Result, I took seven. The same day, in the process, I had a training match with my club in Jeumont (where he will officiate between 1970 and 1978, note). I was still playing libero at the time, but I was so hateful that I planted five of them. You once said that there was nothing spontaneous about your game. job. Hours of training spent doing the same thing. Do you envy or have envied the spontaneity of certain goal scorers? Papin: I liked Gerd Müller and Joe Jordan, a Scotsman from Manchester United. More generally, I was very English and German football. Because on TV, I watched “foreign goals” on Stade 2. And that all the goals I saw outside the area, like a volley, I had the impression that it only happened there , in fact. The best part is that I too went through this section when I was in Bruges! I loved seeing myself in Stage 2! And on the spontaneity of the rough gesture? Papin: When you work every day, you perfect your gesture. I counted, I hit the ball more than 1.6 million times. At the rate of 200 keystrokes per day for most of my training career. For 346 goals, which is a relatively low ratio in the end. But whatever it is, what you have to remember is that all this work, you do it to avoid thinking about the match. To make you believe that what you do, the goals you write down, you do it instinctively. Nothing could be further from the truth. It was after my career that I understood. By reviewing my goals, by seeing others. The races you do, the positioning of the body at the time of impact with the ball, it’s anything but instinct, it’s work. Hours of work. And it gets lost very quickly. On hearing you, it looks like you are one of those who think that you are not born a scorer, but that you become one. Don’t you believe in innate abilities? Papin: Yes, I think we are born with certain qualities. I had the goal in my blood. I sincerely mean it. We have it or we don’t have it. But like any gift, it can be worked. As a child, my father taught me how to hit a ball correctly. Very, very young, I could send a balloon to 40 meters without any problem. Honestly, I had a perfect typing technique. This is also why I started Libero. Because in youth teams, we often put the one who hits the hardest behind. And then, each time there was a free kick, I obviously lit. The guards were six feet tall, I just had to put the ball in the ceiling and it was good. After, for the rest, I really started to work in front of the goal when I arrived at OM … (He reflects) Although it is false, in fact. In Bruges, I already made “goals to goals” with Philippe Vande Walle. He, too, hit the ball well. Like me, he was able to send the ball 50 meters effortlessly. Suddenly, we put the moving goals a little further than the surface and we sent caramels. The rules were simple, we were hitters and goalkeepers in turn and it could last like that for 45 or 50 minutes. Your first season at OM (86-87) is not so obvious. At the time, supporters took you in flu and called you JPP for the first time. For “J’en Peux Plus”, initially. Because you missed too many opportunities, is that it? Papin: Countless numbers. I harvested a maximum. However, I put 13 goals that season, but I should have scored 30 more. The problem is that when I arrived at OM, nobody tried to understand why I had scored so many goals in Valenciennes and then in Bruges. I still remember my last press conference at the end of my first season at OM where I told the journalists that they will never call me “I can’t help it anymore”. It was from there that I started working with Alain Casanova, our goalkeeper, after training. For six years, we ended each session with a 40-minute rab where I turned it on from all sides. This is why I dedicated my Ballon d’Or to her in 1991. How did six and a half years earlier, a future Ballon d’Or, end up signing in Bruges? Papin: We didn’t have an extraordinary team with Valenciennes, but we were making results. In 1985, we even went very close to the rise in Division 1. That’s how Bruges started to take an interest in me. That season, they came to see me twelve times! And the last three, it was Raoul Lambert in person who came to scout me. Each time I scored. Suddenly, he considered me as his successor. In the process, there is this meeting between leaders of the two clubs. And in fact, it was not a difficult choice to make. Basically, I was told: “If you don’t sign in Bruges, the club will shut down.” And anyway, I didn’t want to do like everyone else and sign in Lille, Lens or Auxerre. The stranger spoke to me more than France. And at the time, Bruges was still a club that emerged from a Champions League final a few years earlier at Wembley. In 1978 exactly. I was 15, it was my youth. And above all there was my father. Which I systematically contradicted. Because one day my grandmother told me that my father had always made the wrong choices. So when he said yes, I said no. He thought white, I thought black. I’m not kidding, it’s true. I went to see him, I asked his opinion. He said to me: “Bruges, especially not. There has never been a Frenchman who has succeeded in Belgium. This is not a country for you.” Well, well, I signed in Bruges … Marc Degryse, Jan Ceulemans, where do you locate them in your personal pantheon? Papin: Degryse, it was still above all my competitor at the time. But all the guys I met there, it’s still the beginning of the adventure. Hugo Broos, Alex Querter, Luc Beyens, I will never forget them all. Bruges is without doubt the most beautiful stage of my career. Because without Bruges, there would not have been everything else. Honestly, I would not have liked to come back afterwards. I came to kick off, to attend one or the other European Cup match, to receive my title of best foreign player in the history of the Club, but it is in another role that I would have liked to see come back. Unfortunately, this has not been possible so far. Who knows? I am only 56 years old … Thanks to Bruges, you will join the France team in extremis for the 1986 World Cup in Mexico. You made your debut in February 1986 against Northern Ireland. What did the Blues represent to you at that time? Papin: A dream! Because of bad circumstances, I never played with Zidane, but I played with my idol, Michel Platini. The first time I met him was at the France team training center. In the evening, as I couldn’t sleep, I started to play billiards. It was 11 p.m. I was alone and Platini arrived. Dressed in Italian with a large overcoat that reached him at the bottom of the ankles, he took off his coat and took a pool cue. But I was panicked. I did not know what to do. It looked like a five year old kid who saw a lollipop for the first time. What moment! You once said that you started scoring a lot of goals the day you became less selfish. However, fundamentally, a goal scorer like you is above all a selfish being, isn’t it? Papin: I believe that the more the years passed, the less I was. Because I was associated with players for whom it was as important as me to score goals. Klaus Allofs, who was my big brother, Chris Waddle, Eric Cantona, Abedi Pelé … In Marseille, I was no longer alone, there were four of us who had to score. Of course, it was I who scored the most, but we were all capable of it and we had to please everyone. It was important for the group spirit. And if I wanted to score goals, I also knew that I needed others and that it was in my interest somewhere to spare the susceptibilities of each other. To pass at the right time, to leave a penalty for one, a free kick to the other. Even if it was sometimes complicated for the ego. As a coach, you had a guy like Jérémy Perbet under your orders in Strasbourg. With us, in Belgium, he was a hit. A real cool-headed scorer. How do you stack goals when you don’t have intrinsic qualities above average? Papin: Jérémy’s problem at the time was that he was a bit heavy. He had trouble getting around. But we could see that he had this address in front of the goal. I once talked about it with Enzo Scifo who also had him under his orders in Mons. Jérémy was not an average player, he was more than that, but scorers like that are guys who need to be surrounded. Basically, two centralizers who give him balloons. Perbet is a goal scorer formatted in a certain way of scoring goals. Like a Stéphane Guivarc’h or a Pippo Inzaghi, they are finishers. But it’s players, if you block their wingers, normally, they no longer exist. And then, in another register, there are the space scorers like me or Jürgen Klinsmann and Marco Van Basten. Guys who need to run, to provoke one on one, but who, too, only lived for the goal. Like Enzo Scifo, another soccer legend from the end of the last century, you quickly grilled as a coach with unfortunate experiences in Strasbourg, Châteauroux and Lens. Do you feel like you are blacklisted in the profession today? Papin: Yes, like Enzo, indeed. But I do not regret having started in smaller clubs. You shouldn’t think that all great players become great coaches. I wanted to give myself time to learn. The problem is that we forgive the very old players less. People think too quickly that we have a magic wand … But it still tickles me to train. I would like to, but where and who? Today in football you need a good agent. Football is a circle. And when you leave the circle, it’s very complicated to go back there. But I would have liked to have had one last challenge. Are there encounters that marked the player you have become? Coaches? You knew the cream of the crop at the time. From Henk Houwaart to Franz Beckenbauer via Aimé Jacquet, Raymond Goethals, Tomislav Ivic, Fabio Capello, Giovanni Trapattoni or Otto Rehhagel? Papin: Trapattoni and Capello, these were real coaches. I appreciate the Italian culture, their way of managing. De la rigueur, mais aussi une certaine façon de faire la part des choses. Ce ne sont pas les coachs qui t’ont le plus réussi. À Milan, tu disputes deux finales de Ligue des Champions, mais tu n’en débutes aucune des deux comme titulaire. Pour le fameux 4-0 contre le Barça, tu es carrément en tribune…Comment tu l’as vécu ? Papin: C’était la philosophie du club. Et c’est ça que je n’ai pas tout de suite compris. Si je l’avais accepté, je ne serais pas parti au Bayern à l’été 1994 après seulement deux saisons. Mais voilà, à Milan, le club comptait 30 joueurs et jonglait avec cet effectif incroyable en fonction des compétitions, des matches, des blessures. C’était une gestion qui faisait mal à l’égo quand tu ne jouais pas. Parfois pendant trois semaines… Là-bas, j’étais un parmi les 30. Le fait est qu’on est quelques mois avant l’arrêt Bosman, et les clubs n’ont encore le droit qu’à trois étrangers sur la feuille de match. J’étais peut-être le Ballon d’or 1991, mais nous étions trois Ballons d’or avec Gullit et Van Basten. Auxquels tu pouvais aussi ajouter Rijkaard, Savicevic et Boban. Aujourd’hui, on jouerait à six en même temps, ce serait la folie, à l’époque, ce n’était pas possible.À l’époque, tu ne gagnes peut-être pas la Ligue des Champions avec l’OM, mais tu es en pleine lumière. Le capitaine de l’équipe de France, le meilleur joueur français de ta génération. On voyait ta tête partout. Dans des pubs à la télé, dans les journaux, dans les Guignols aussi. Comment tu le vivais ? Papin: Les Guignols, je l’ai mal vécu. Très mal. C’était impossible de bien le vivre. C’était méchant. On se moquait de moi, beaucoup de ma complicité avec Cantona et globalement de l’image que je renvoyais. Bref, chaque jour, je prenais un missile, l’équivalent d’un couteau planté dans le dos parce qu’on me faisait dire n’importe quoi. Je connaissais du monde à Canal, j’essayais d’interférer pour qu’ils se calment un peu, mais dès que j’intervenais, j’en prenais encore plus plein la gueule. Ça a beaucoup changé quand ils ont su que j’avais des problèmes avec ma fille handicapée. Là, ils ont un peu temporisé. C’était paradoxal, parce que je pouvais les haïr sur plein d’aspects, mais j’étais aussi conscient que c’était grâce à eux que j’étais devenu aussi populaire. Quelque part, les Guignols m’ont fait entrer dans le foyer des gens. Je ne l’oublie pas non plus. Il faut se rendre compte qu’à l’époque, les Guignols faisaient élire le Président de la République. Chirac, en 1995, avec la pomme, c’est eux. Il est au plus bas dans les sondages, mais ils ont créé le personnage. A l’époque, il n’y pas internet et quelque part, je crois que les gens étaient plus accrochés à la fiction qu’à la réalité. Et puis, les années ont passé. Il y a eu Virenque, Barthez… J’étais content que ce ne soit plus moi (rires).Tu as inscrit ton dernier but en Ligue 1 avec Bordeaux en mars 1998. Mais tu as continué de jouer à un petit niveau jusqu’en 2004, au Cap Ferret, à 41 ans donc…Marquer, c’était une drogue, tu ne voulais pas t’arrêter?Papin: J’ai longtemps regretté d’avoir loupé ce Mondial 1998 à la maison. Ça aurait été une fin tellement parfaite pour moi. Le problème, c’est que la dernière année, à Bordeaux, je n’étais pas titulaire tout le temps et Aimé Jacquet avait été très clair, il avait dit qu’il ne prendrait que les titulaires. Donc c’était normal que je n’y sois pas. Par la suite, j’avais encore ce besoin de jouer. Plus de m’entrainer. D’ailleurs, je ne m’entrainais pas. Je prenais mon bateau le dimanche matin, je rejoignais le Cap Ferret, juste en face de chez moi. On jouait dans des petits bleds contre des amateurs. Mais les “stades” étaient pleins. Parfois 2.000 personnes. Les gens venaient pour me voir. C’était un peu ma tournée d’adieux. J’ai vécu trois saisons magnifiques, on est monté trois fois de division, j’ai inscrit 130 buts. C’était mon petit coin d’oxygène. On jouait avec les copains, on ne se prenait pas la tête. Propos recueillis par Maurice Brun
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