He may not be a player who will impress you with his footballing skills, but Brest’s centre-back Julien Le Cardinal is such an inspirational figure for all the kids worldwide. This professional footballer managed to become what he is today and to play the Champions League football despite working as a pizza chef and forklift driver around his 18th birthday.Le Cardinal played his first football game as a pro just ten days before his 24th birthday.##NAJAVA_MECA_8564164##And tonight – he’s about to appear in the Champions League against PSV Eindhoven.”Those were complicated times,” he recollected for SoFoot. “At one point, I stopped playing football, I devoted myself to work, because when you don’t have a job, you don’t have money. And, I played in Saint-Brieuc for 150 euros per month. And when you turn 18 or 19, especially since I wasn’t particularly good at school…”So he started working at the restaurant…”I washed the dishes, then prepared pasta, a-ha-ha… Someone then left, so I progressed to appetizers and dessert. Later, I was a pizza chef. But I wasn’t very good,” speaks Le Cardinal honestly.##EDITORS_CHOICE##He already said goodbye to football at that moment.”From a young age, football was my main goal, but it was not a part of my life then. The episode in Guingamp (the youth team in the 2014/2015 season) took me away from football a little. Not the club itself, but the world of professionals. The mentality, the choices, the behaviour, all of that didn’t suit me. I was an amateur, everything is different in the professional world. It’s more like that: every man for himself. I didn’t fit in there. I was isolated. Then I got injured, they no longer came to pick me up at school to take me to training. And there the dream dissipated. I don’t know, maybe they didn’t like my face. It took me a long time to recover after that.”So, what else can you do other than find a genuine nine-to-five job?”I worked in a factory, preparing things that should be transported to the supermarket. Then, I worked for a year at the railway station. Then, I was a pizza master, and in my last year, I drove a forklift in a pancake factory. All that between the ages of 17 and 19″.Engin Firat defends his poor record with Harambee StarsHowever, that restaurant proved to be crucial for his future life. Because that’s where he met his wife, and she pushed him back to football.”Before that, I had some relationships that weren’t great, I went out a lot… And at one point, she said to me: ‘Either you’re going to move your ass, go back to football and start living a normal life or you’re going to end up all alone.’ And I returned to football”.However, he was not ready for the Ligue 1. He played only ten games at Lens, but he improved – immensly. Enough for Brest to buy him for 1,700,000 euros.”It’s like we’re at home. In the meantime, we have a son, so it’s great for us that he can grow up surrounded by family. I, on the other hand, needed more time to play and that’s why we came here.”Harambee Stars invited for special Mapinduzi Cup tourneyAnd here he is now, in the Champions League.”I remember when I was a boy watching Juninho of Olympique Lyon on TV, scoring goals from free kicks. I remember watching Lyon-Barcelona and Lyon-Real Madrid in the kitchen with my father. It was the ultimate dream…”And what’s the lesson for all those kids dreaming of reaching the same…”The lesson is that you must never give up and, that the environment is very important in the life of a footballer. And that even when you achieve your goal, everything can collapse”.Finally, a particularly interesting question from our SoFoot colleagues – is pineapple allowed on pizza?”Oh, no, no, no! Take that away from me. It wasn’t on the menu at the restaurant I worked for; it’s an Italian restaurant, after all. We have to stop with that pineapple on the pizza,” laughs Le Cardinal.UEFA CHAMPIONS LEAGUE ROUND 6Tuesday20:45: (3.70) Dinamo Zagreb (3.50) Celtic (2.00)20:45: (6.75) Girona (4.40) Liverpool (1.48)23:00: (2.55) Atalanta (3.60) Real Madrid (2.85)23:00: (4.80) Brest (3.60) PSV (1.77)23:00: (3.00) Club Brugge (3.60) Sporting (2.40)23:00: (2.35) Leverkusen (3.45) Inter (3.20)23:00: (2.65) RB Leipzig (3.40) Aston Villa (2.80)23:00: (8.50) Salzburg (5.50) PSG (1.33)23:00: (14.0) Shakhtar (8.00) Bayern (1.17)Wednesday20:45: (1.08) Atl.Madrid (13.0) Slovan B. (20.0)20:45: (1.53) Lille (4.10) Sturm (6.50)23:00: (1.35) Arsenal (5.50) Monaco (10.0)23:00: (1.62) Benfica (4.10) Bologna (6.25)23:00: (3.60) Dortmund (3.70) Barcelona (2.10)23.00: (1.38) Feyenoord (4.80) Sparta Praha (8.50)23:00: (3.80) Juventus (3.50) Man.City (2.10)23:00: (1.28) Milan (6.20) Crvena Zvezda (12.0)23:00: (1.35) Stuttgart (5.30) Young Boys (8.00)***odds are subject to change***
