Eduardo Camavinga, a gray bow tie on an immaculate shirt, listens attentively to the prefect of the Brittany region, Michèle Kirry, calling one by one the 132 people who came to receive their naturalization certificate.
Phlegmatic, the professional footballer from Stade Rennes, born in Angola to Congolese parents, awaits his turn. He makes the smiles that his family, his agent and some members of the club send to him as if to reassure him. Eduardo Camavinga is not worried. He “manages” all of this: the official ceremony on December 20, the photographers who machine-gun the least of his reactions, these strangers who greet him with their eyes…
Family photo of new French citizens with the prefect of the Brittany and Ille-et-Vilaine region, Michèle… https://t.co/hHIk88CXAf
At only 17, he is already used to it. It has been in the spotlight for several months, presented as the revelation of the French championship, already coveted by some of the biggest European clubs. Facing Bordeaux, Saturday, December 21, the teenager should play his thirtieth professional match.
Sense of anticipation
As a matter of course, Eduardo Camavinga has established himself as an essential link in the Breton workforce since, in the fall, Julien Stéphan, the coach of Stade Rennes, systematically integrated him into the team. With each game, the one who plays the role of torchbearer, shows such accuracy in his game and such serenity that we forget his age.
Despite his frail physique, the left-hander knows how to be aggressive on the field and imposes himself above all against his opponents by his sense of anticipation. Always on the lookout for the best distillation pass. On December 15, in the final minutes of the game, in Lyon, he thus offered victory to his team after slaloming in defense and cheating the goalkeeper with a strike unchecked with his wrong foot.
Eduardo Camavinga never stops breaking early records. His rating swells. In September, André Villas-Boas, a Marseille coach, estimated the cost of his transfer at forty million euros. According to the daily The Team, the amount of the transaction would now be negotiated at one hundred million euros … Real Madrid would be interested.
"His talent explodes in the eyes of everyone, notes Julien Stéphan. We do not control what is said or the sums. What we master is the support that we have with him on a daily basis and the speech that we give him. We have to protect him. "
"He will not lose his carelessness"
His club, his agent, Moussa Sissoko, who also advises Ousmane Dembélé (the Barcelona player), as well as his parents decided to isolate the young man from the media and economic maelstrom. Radio silence.
