Yes, N’Golo Kante still has his Mini. You’d marvel at Leicester: emerging from the training ground would be Jamie Vardy in his personalised Bentley, others in Lamborghinis and 4x4s, the owners’ helicopter parked on the grass. And out would pull Kante in his plain little car. He seems surprised his vehicle was famous. “Yeah?” he asks. “Me, I never been someone who loves a car and when I was young I didn’t have the ambition of a car or something like that.
“But, uh, my Mini, for the beginning, was good to learn to drive on the left. I got it in Leicester. And I still have it now. But it’s good.”
There’s something he particularly likes about being at its wheel. When he ventures into town, explains Kante in his quiet and halting manner, nobody takes a second glance. Nobody imagines a footballer might be driving.
Just 17 months ago, he was a backwater player at a backwater club (Caen). Now he’s a France star and the most influential footballer in the Premier League. Don’t believe that? Since arriving, the two clubs he has represented have garnered 68 points in 56 games without him but 123 points in 54 games with him. And Kante’s Leicester were champions; Kante’s Chelsea are haring away in the title race.
It’s been some transformation and he struggles with it. Has life changed? “Life is . . . [laugh] . . . it . . . yeah life is similar. I do what I always used to, which is play football and go home,” he says. “It’s training, games, go home, always the same, but the level and the atmosphere, the people watching, is different now.”
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He suggests, probably in hope: “I’m not especially famous. But people recognise me because I play for Chelsea and for what we did at Leicester last season but it’s not a big difference.
“Before, you go to Paris and you are easy, you know you are like everyone else. Now people recognise you. But [and he does not sound entirely convinced] it’s OK, it’s OK, it’s OK.”
This is his first UK newspaper interview and it took coaxing, and it’s just that doing is so much more his thing than talking. His former flatmate at Boulogne, Faycal Nini, recalls a companion who was “gentil” but impossible to draw out. Meals and journeys to training passed silently.
Answers flicker then peter out in little “uhs” and laughs: you can light a match with Kante but never get the blaze of conversation going. But it’s clear why he’s been so loved in the dressing rooms of every team he’s played for. The smile. The genuineness of the look in his eyes: an unbelievably unassuming, gentle soul.
It’s also clear something Pierre Ville said is true. Ville was head of tiny Suresnes, in suburban Paris, the club where Kante lurked, despite trials with Sochaux, Lorient, Rennes and the French national centre, Clairefontaine, from ages 10 to 19. N’Golo may be quiet and private, said Ville, but don’t be fooled into thinking he’s timid or shy. He’s clear what he thinks and wants. Leicester discovered this when unable to dissuade him from using a contract clause to join Chelsea for £25m.
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Kante loved Leicester but, “I used to speak to [Chelsea technical director] Michael Emenalo, and my entourage and my agent, and some professional players older than me gave advice — it was a difficult choice because when you feel good in the club, like I did at Leicester, it’s very difficult to move. But when I looked at everything, I knew what Chelsea could be for me. I knew the ambition of the club and thought this a good opportunity for me to improve my career. To learn something more.
“I haven’t got a secret. I try to anticipate the opponent and know what he’s going to do
“I couldn’t have expected to fight for the title [at Leicester]. But what happened was very beautiful, very beautiful,” he says, full smile. “You can’t really explain it. Everything went well from the start. We win, win, win. Maybe you can speak about the spirit of the team. Also Riyad [Mahrez], such a player. And Jamie [Vardy], with his beautiful goals. But it was the team. Everyone, at some moment, did something very important for the team.”
“Team” means everything to Kante. It’s his reply when I ask what he thinks about on the pitch. To have been Leicester’s players’ player of the year “means a lot. It’s from the teammates, from the lads, it’s a little bit touching,” he says, tapping his heart. “The year I spent there, it’s going to stay in my mind. I always remember this day of May 2, 2016, we’re all together at Jamie’s house and see Chelsea play against Tottenham and it goes from 2-0 to 2-2 and we were champions.” Now Chelsea win, win, win. “The spirit is similar in some ways,” says Kante. “At Leicester we wanted to win and not lose and to fight for every minute. At Chelsea it’s the same.
“But the difference is Chelsea is a champion club, who have won everything and there are champion players. At Leicester for nearly everyone it was the first time.”
He gets compared to Claude Makelele, a French-African Parisian he watched on TV growing up. “I can’t be like him,” he says, but Robert Huth, who played with both, reckons Kante may be better. He’s more multifunctional. Leicester’s counterattacking demanded a midfield that could create transitions, so Kante focused on tackles and interceptions.
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His statistics are off the scale. “I haven’t got a secret. I try to anticipate the dribble of the opponent and to know what he’s going to do and block him.” He looks at body language and tries to read movement “but everyone does that,” he says.
He points out that “not every time” does he win the ball one-on-one and is self-critical about the increase, this season, in his bookings. Antonio Conte “is a very good coach. In training we’re working hard and are always working hard to win the games. The way the coach wants me to play is very good.”
Here’s where Makelele cannot compete. Conte’s formation and style demands Kante play higher up the field, with more of the ball, than last season and once more he’s posting remarkable numbers for passing and touches in games. One of nine children, he grew up in Rueil-Malmaison in a busy, happy, lively apartment and was always playing sport in the street with his four brothers.
“We used to play football or skate ball outside with friends,” he says. “When I began school we started swimming, rugby, football, athletics and basketball. After basketball one day a teacher said, ‘You have good mentality. You lose but kept playing for your teammates.’ Another day we did cross-country and I finished third.
“And maybe one year later we did rugby, I tried to tackle the man and my teacher said, ‘When you were at the tournament the scout from the club said you have good spirit, good condition, maybe you can play rugby. In the end the teacher said to my family, ‘Maybe it would be good for N’Golo to do some sport’ and my choice was to play football.”
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Basketball? Rugby? Kante is barely 5ft 6ft. “No, no,” he agrees. “If you want to fight, OK, but maybe in rugby I’ll be too small for that. I didn’t choose my size. When I play, I don’t think I’m smaller than others. I just try to do my best. I can say I adapt, I just fight with what I have got.” The voice is quiet, he’s smiling, but he means it.
Football’s mighty mini, N’Golo Kante.
N’Golo Kante supports the Chelsea Foundation, dedicated to providing football to support communities at home and abroad. chelseafc.com/foundation