Do you know who Jonathan Clauss is? If you do, then you have heard about him relatively recently.Soon that guy could become a player of one of the most powerful clubs in the world. The French right-back is one of the most sought-after players in his position this transfer window. Although until a few years ago he was a minor league anonymous who gave up the idea of becoming a professional footballer. Today, he is a member of the world champions and a transfer market wish of at least three clubs that were European champions.Clauss is a member of the Yenish people from France, like some famous names such as Antoine Griezmann or Rafael van der Vaart. Most Yenish people live in Germany, but there are also some in France, Switzerland, Belgium, Luxembourg, Hungary, Belarus… There are many theories about the origin and settlement of Yenish people in Europe. Some consider them descendants of Jews, some link them to the Khazars, and some confuse them with the Romani people because of the nomadic way of life and similarities in language, traditions and activities they engaged in. Even today, tens of thousands of them live in caravans that do not have a permanent place of residence. Anyway, in France there are very few of them in the east of the country and a good part of them assimilated. Jonathan Clauss is from one of those families. The last name itself sounds Germanic and somehow connects him with Germany.##NAJAVA_MECA_6508219##He was born in Troyes but grew up in Osthofen, a village of about 800 souls with a 13th-century castle as its only attraction. Fifteen kilometers away is the much more famous Strasbourg. The most famous city of the province of Alsace. With the club of the same name, which is the pride of the region. Jonathan Clauss also dreamed about the Strasbourg jersey, like every kid from that area.He started training football as a child back in 1998, and started playing senior football a little less than 10 years ago. Unnoticed and far from the spotlight of the main stage of French football. He went through Strasbourg’s football academy, spent 10 years at the club, but had to leave when he came of age.Strasbourg told him they do not count on him and broke his heart. They just told him to pack his things up.”We had to put him together. He was falling apart. For days. He was crying and was inconsolable. On top of all that, his father and I were going through a divorce. His world collapsed and he thought that nothing good would happen to him in life,” Josiane, Jonathan’s mother, said about his beginning in football.He went to the ranks of lesser-known local rival ASPV Strasbourg who competed in the fourth division. He spent three years there and was relegated to the fifth league. Even fifth division football was not destined for him. So he ended up in Germany – he went to study and play amateur football in the sixth league. He even acted in a local theater.”I earned between 300 and 600 euros a month. After training, I would go to the night shift at the post office and sort mail. I also did some other jobs,” said Jonathan Klaus.The ‘Mbappe recipe’: PSG have brought the striker for the future! And again bypassed financial fair playFor two years, he played for the German sixth league club Links. At that time, Jonathan Clauss was already 21 years old, and it didn’t really seem that a serious football career was in his cards. At first glance, with all the tattoos and bleached hair, it was more certain that a career as a DJ in some club in Ibiza awaited him than in a professional football club.”He was always the first to play music in the dressing room. Some had the wrong view of him and said he was not focused, but I see it differently. He pumped up the atmosphere, after his DJ show everyone played better football. We were amateurs and we needed to relax,” says Mark Rubio, a former teammate from Strasbourg and Links.After two years of amateur football in Germany, he returned to France and signed for the fifth division Raon l’Étape at the invitation of local coach Bruno Paterno. At least he escaped from the sixth league to a rank higher. Until then, he mostly went lower one rank after another. But honestly, playing in the fifth division at the age of 22 is not exactly a great achievement.Many would have given up and started looking for a decent job in his shoes. In parallel with football, he worked as a courier, handing out leaflets…”He could not live with a few hundred euros from football. He got up around four in the morning to prepare leaflets and parcels. And then he would go around town. He played football for fun and had already given up on the idea of becoming a professional footballer. We had heated discussions, the tones were often high. He knows what my standards are and that I’m an old school coach. Sometimes the excuse was that his phone didn’t work, sometimes he fell asleep because he didn’t set the alarm, sometimes he had celebrations and family obligations… I told him he couldn’t do that. It is unacceptable for a coach to wait for a player. If he hadn’t ‘fixed’ those habits, he would have stayed in the world of amateur football,” said Bruno Paterno later, who didn’t like Clauss’ habits, tattoos, wacky hairstyles, fluorescent shoes…In Raon, Clauss had his first contact with serious level football. Fate arranged that his club ran into the famous Saint Etienne in the third round of the French Cup. Clauss and his friends tormented the big favorite quite a bit. The score was 1-1 after 120 minutes, and the only goal for Raon was scored by Clauss himself. St. Etienne had better luck in the penalty shootout and went on in the competition. After the penalties, back then the goalkeeper of the France national team, Stephane Ruffier, arrogantly approached Clauss and said:”Come on, pack up and go home. Don’t forget you can watch me on TV in the Europa League.”Nevertheless, the season was successful as Raon won second place in the championship and qualified for the fourth division. Another step forward for Clauss. It started to open up…Then he accepted an invitation from the third league team Avranches. He jumped two ranks in a little more than a year and got a chance in a serious competition. And that French Cup again. One of the craziest competitions in European football, where sensations are a completely normal occurrence, where the lower league teams give great trouble to the first league members. This time, Clauss’ Avranches ran into the second division Lavallois in the third round.Jonathan Clauss played one of the games of his life. The goal he scored in the 3-1 victory finally drew attention to his name. He took the ball in his own half, started sprinting on the right flank, played a one-two with a teammate, ran 70 meters with the ball, dribbled past the goalkeeper, then another opponent and scored. Today, one would think it was Theo Hernandez in the video.”When you know him, you’re not surprised. You know he can run like crazy until tomorrow. You know he keeps pushing forward. He is like that in his private life as well. Dynamic,” said his then coach Anthony Bove.Avranches and Clauss continued to fly in the French Cup. They also passed the second round. And then in the round of 16, Strasbourg awaited them. The club that Clauss grew up in and rejected him. After drama and penalties, Avranches went on to set up a sensational quarter-final against Paris Saint-Germain. Of course, the dream team from Paris won easily (4-0) and ended the fairy tale of a town of about 10,000 inhabitants, but the match was more uncertain than the result suggests.”We played at the stadium in Caen and everyone was cheering us. At halftime it was 0-1, when Maxwell approached me and said: ‘Please stop running that much. I can’t keep up with you’. Of course I was glad,” Clauss recalls.Since that match, Clauss has seen that he can at least run with the best. He entered the team of the season in the third division and finally received a serious offer.He was 25 years old when he was invited by the second division team Quevilly, who in those years did miracles in the French Cup. Clauss signed the first professional contract of his career. He was standard in the second league and as a right winger delivered eight assists.”It’s genetics. He is naturally made to run back and forth and repeat as much as you like. He can’t get tired. I changed his position and pushed him to the right midfielder. He did not like it at the beginning, but later he exploded in Arminia in that very position. Jonathan did not have a normal football upbringing and did not pass professional challenges when he should have. He gradually learned and adopted the lifestyle of a professional football player. He deserved everything that is happening to him today,” says Emmanuel Da Costa, his former coach from Quevilly.Clauss vs Neymar (©Gallo Images)Clauss did not save Quevilly from an express return to the third league. But at least he had a good time…”A party maniac! It’s in his genes. He had to go out. Even when we lost 0-2, he had to go out in the evening to a nightclub. But he was young and carefree. Germany taught him some things later,” says Mathieu Duhamel, a teammate from Quevilly.He did not want to take a step back to the third league and he received an invitation to go for a trial at the Belarusian Dinamo Brest, which in those days appointed Diego Maradona as their president. He trained there for ten days, satisfied the coach and returned to France to pack and wait for the contract. However, the coach was replaced, and with him out went the plan for Belarusians to hire Clauss.He was left without a club and then Arminia Bielefeld called. The German second division team was looking for a right-back and scouts suggested the names of Zürich’s Cedric Brunner and Jonathan Clauss. The coach decided on Brunner, but he was injured in a friendly match for Zurich and so Clauss was offered a two-year contract.”He was fast, strong, offensive, and he also spoke German. It is very important for us because we don’t really have money for translators in our budget. Clauss was lucky,” said Arminia’s director at the time, Samir Arabi.##EDITORS_CHOICE##He established himself in the first season in Bundesliga 2, and exploded in the second! He scored five goals and made eight assists!”He integrated very quickly. He immediately took over the music in the dressing room and at one point we were all singing his favorite song. And on the field, he learned very quickly. He was getting stronger and faster. He is always there on the right, ready to catch the sprint. Just push the ball to him,” said former Arminia teammate Florian Hartherz.In competition with favorites like Hamburger or Stuttgart, Arminia won a surprising first place and qualified for the Bundesliga. But Clauss did not play together with his teammates in the elite of German football. Coronavirus pandemic stopped the season nine rounds before the end, Clauss’ contract expired and he decided to accept Lens’ offer, to sign a three-year cooperation. On the condition that they allow him to complete the remaining nine rounds with Arminia in German second tier.As much as Arminia regretted then that they signed Clauss only on a two-year contract, they probably regret today in Lens that they only signed him on a three-year contract back then. However, it is understandable. They have only returned to the first league after years of absence, and Clauss’ biography did not exactly inspire confidence.Lens had a great comeback season and almost made it to European competitions. They won seventh place. They repeated the same ranking last season. Far from fighting for survival… Clauss was the team’s best player and finished the season with as many as 11 assists in 40 matches. Last season he was a revelation, and this season he has already repeated himself.Congolese defender Mbemba switches peace in Porto for chaos in MarseilleBack in February, Lens fans started a campaign on social media for Clauss to get an invitation to the national team. He joked about it himself by quoting lines from a French cult comedy.“You people are crazy. Thank you for this kind of support. But as a French philosopher said: Forget that chance does not exist. You never know. Maybe you get a chance by mistake,” Clauss wrote on Twitter.And soon after received a call from national team coach Didier Deschamps!Deschamps has Benjamin Pavard, Nordi Mukiele, Leo Dubois, Djibril Sidibe as the right backs… He invited Clauss in March for friendly matches and was not wrong. He immediately gave him a chance to debut in the first match from the bench. He was the starter in the second match. He received a call-up recently in the League of nations matches, made two more appearances and is well on his way to being on the passengers list for Qatar.Lens’s 3-5-2 formation where he is a right winger suits him perfectly for his offensive style of play. And Deschamps has recently started experimenting with three in the back formations and attacking fullbacks. Clauss is on the right flank, the counterpart to Theo Hernandez on the left. He was first in the league in terms of the number of successful crosses. He is equally useful in the defensive and attacking phases, and does great with set pieces.Jonathan Clauss. 🔴⚫️ pic.twitter.com/vJKslGTQ0x— ًEllis. (@EIIisV3) July 15, 2022 Even bigger clubs than Lens saw it. Marseille were the first to start the operation to bring Clauss when they offered Lens 5 million euros, but were denied. The club from the north of France asked for twice as much. It may be a lot for Marseille, but not for English clubs. Clauss’ name has been in Thomas Tuchel’s notebook for a year now, who has James and occasionally Azpilicueta in that position, but he could use a player like this. Meanwhile, Manchester United joined the race, whose coach Ten Hag is also looking for that type of player. On the left he has already brought Tyrell Malacia, and on the right he sees Clauss. The only problem is that the Frenchman is 29 years old and does not fit into the strategy of bringing young players to Chelsea and Man United.The coaches would accept him wholeheartedly, but people in the administrations are also looking at how to earn something in the future.
