He may shy away from the limelight, but there were few more popular members of France’s 2018 World Cup-winning side than N’Golo Kante, who on Saturday got his hands on one of the few trophies that had so far evaded him when Chelsea beat Manchester City in the Champions League final.
France supporters came up with a song for Kante during that triumphant summer in Russia, to the tune of the 1969 hit “Les Champs-Elysees” by Joe Dassin. As the song goes, “he is small, he is kind, he stopped Leo Messi”.
It does take a ruthless streak to get to the very top in football as Kante has, winning two Premier League titles, the Champions League, the Europa League and the FA Cup as well as the World Cup.
Despite that, everyone who has encountered Kante since the start of his career in the Paris suburbs seems to agree there is no other player quite like the 30-year-old.
“Every time he comes back to Paris he comes to see us,” Karim El-Moudkhil, Kante’s former coach, told…