By Igor Brisa

Today I want to write about N’Golo Kanté. A couple of weeks ago I wrote about underdogs who became champions, and Leicester City was at the center of that post. After that, I wanted to know more about one player in that squad. I thought I already knew his story: small guy, runs all day, always smiling. What was new to me was how late it all started. At 21, the man who would go on to win the World Cup and the Champions League had played 11 minutes of professional football. He was also studying accounting.

Eleven minutes at 21

Kanté was born in Paris in 1991. His parents had moved to France from Mali in 1980. He grew up in a small apartment in Rueil-Malmaison, just west of the city, and his father died shortly after he turned 11. He came up through JS Suresnes, a local amateur club, and the bigger names kept saying no. FourFourTwo lists Rennes, Sochaux, Amiens, Lorient, and the Clairefontaine academy among the places that rejected him. Pierre Ville, an assistant coach from those years, said his size and his selfless style kept him off the radar. Arsène Wenger passed on him too, so the president of Suresnes, a close friend of Wenger’s, personally drove him around to visit other clubs. My favorite story from this period is from when he was 10. His coach, Piotr Wojtyna, told him he had no left foot. Two months later, he could juggle the ball 100 times with it. He heard the problem and went to work on it.

Boulogne finally took him into its reserve team. His professional debut came on May 18, 2012: the last 11 minutes of a 2-1 home loss to Monaco, for a team that was already relegated. While playing there, he earned a diploma in accounting and got to training on a kick scooter.

One day, a Boulogne teammate named Eric Vandenabeele was watching the Europa League with him and told him he would be playing in that competition someday. Kanté laughed. “No chance!” In 2019, he started the Europa League final, and Chelsea won it 4-1.

Then it happened fast

In 2013 he joined Caen in France’s second division on a free transfer. He played all 38 league games and the team went up. The next season, in Ligue 1, he recovered the ball more times than any other player in Europe, according to the BBC. In August 2015, Leicester signed him for a reported £5.6 million. Steve Walsh, the scout connected to the signings of Jamie Vardy and Riyad Mahrez, had scouted him. His Leicester debut lasted eight minutes. By the end of that season he had 175 tackles, 31 more than anyone else in the Premier League, and 157 interceptions, 15 more than anyone else. Sir Alex Ferguson called him the best player in the league. Claudio Ranieri used to joke that one day he would see Kanté cross the ball and then run in to head it himself. Leicester, a 5,000-to-1 shot, won the title three seasons after Kanté had been playing in France’s third division. Chelsea paid a reported £32 million for him that summer, and he won the league again. He became the first outfield player since Eric Cantona to win back-to-back English titles with different clubs. That season he also took home the PFA Players’ Player of the Year, the FWA Footballer of the Year, and the Premier League Player of the Season.

Kanté played all seven of France’s games at the 2018 World Cup without a goal or an assist. Against Argentina in the round of 16, Didier Deschamps gave him a specific job: stay with Lionel Messi. ESPN’s account says he fouled Messi only once. France won 4-3. The final was his worst game of the tournament. He touched the ball 19 times and came off after 55 minutes, and it was later revealed he had a stomach bug. France still beat Croatia 4-2. Then came the moment everyone remembers. As the players passed the trophy around on the field in Moscow, Kanté waited for his turn. Steven Nzonzi had to ask the others to hand it to him. Back in France, when the singer Vegedream called out each player’s name at the Stade de France, the others danced. Kanté stood there shyly until his teammates lifted him onto their shoulders. When Blaise Matuidi praised what he had done against Messi, Kanté’s answer was simple: “We did it together.”

Porto, 2021

Three years later, Chelsea beat Manchester City 1-0 in the Champions League final and Kanté was named player of the match. UEFA also named him its midfielder of the season. Thomas Tuchel described playing with him as having an extra half a player on the field. When reporters asked about the Ballon d’Or, he said it wasn’t really something he was working toward. Antonio Rüdiger later wrote that he had heard all the stories about Kanté at Chelsea and assumed nobody in football could really be that calm, until he actually met him.

The part that doesn’t fit the fairy tale

This is the part I respect most, because it isn’t clean. In August 2022 he injured his hamstring, and he was out until April 2023. He missed the World Cup in Qatar, where France lost the final on penalties. I know what a long time away does to your head. I had two surgeries and eight months off the field in college, and those were the hardest months of my life. His came at 31, in a World Cup year.

He left Chelsea for Al-Ittihad in Saudi Arabia in 2023. The next year, Deschamps brought him back for Euro 2024, and he was named player of the match against both Austria and the Netherlands. In 2024-25 he won the Saudi league and the King’s Cup. In February 2026 he moved to Fenerbahçe in Turkey on a contract that runs through June 2028.

Then came this summer. Kanté was named to France’s squad for the 2026 World Cup and did not play a single minute. France lost 2-0 to Spain in the semifinal and 6-4 to England in the third-place game, and many fans called the decision disrespectful. L’Équipe reported that he planned to step away from the national team afterward. I’m not going to guess how he felt about it. I don’t know. What I do know is that this is where his France story may end: on the bench at 35, with 69 caps.

Did he really win everything?

Almost. FotMob counts 11 titles:

• Premier League: twice, with Leicester and Chelsea
• FA Cup, Europa League, Champions League, UEFA Super Cup, FIFA Club World Cup: all with Chelsea
• World Cup and UEFA Nations League: with France
• Saudi Pro League and King’s Cup: with Al-Ittihad

Two things are missing. France lost the Euro 2016 final to Portugal, with Kanté an unused substitute. And he has never won the Ballon d’Or, though he made the shortlist in 2021.

What I left out

You can find a lot of Kanté stories online, and I didn’t want to pass along the bad ones. One viral post claims he went from garbage collector in 2009 to World Cup winner in 2018. Africa Check looked into it and found no evidence for it. Kanté himself has said some of the stories his teammates tell about him get exaggerated. The true version doesn’t need any help.

What I take from it

I wrote on this site that results matter, but they don’t need announcing. Kanté is the best example of that I can think of. Business has the same trap as football: it’s easy to reward whoever talks the most in the room. So look at who actually wins the ball back. He was 21 with 11 professional minutes and an accounting diploma. Rejection told him nothing about where he would end up. Neither did his size.

What he did was simple to describe and very hard to repeat. He fixed the weak foot, did the job he was given, and when people tried to give him the credit, he shared it.

#NGoloKante #SoccerHistory #LeicesterCity #Chelsea #WorldCup