If there is one thing guaranteed to vex Benoît Assou-Ekotto, it is hypocrisy. The trouble is, as the Tottenham Hotspur defender acknowledges, his working environment, the parallel universe that is the Premier League, is bogged down in the stuff. It is evident in so many areas but the one that he chooses to highlight involves the interviews that players give to television. Assou-Ekotto has seen it time and time again. Players that he knows to express one view in private, usually strident and expletive-laden, switch to bland when the camera rolls.
« I say: ‘Come on, you have two personalities?' » Assou-Ekotto says. « I can’t listen to people when they speak like that. I know that they lie, and I hate lies. Me, I am not like that. I am honest all of the time, although the truth is not always good to say. »
Assou-Ekotto is the top-level footballer who cuts through the hypocrisy to break what his peers may consider as taboos. The Premier League, he feels, is a shallow and bizarre world, in which friendships are transitory and the hangers-on, particularly the kiss-and-tell girls, are dangerous. He says what plenty of people think. But it is when he discusses his motivation for being a professional that his honesty hits home. To him, football is little more than a job and the driving force has always been the money.
« If I play football with my friends back in France, I can love football, » he says. « But if I come to England, where I knew nobody and I didn’t speak English … why did I come here? For a job. A career is only 10, 15 years. It’s only a job. Yes, it’s a good, good job and I don’t say that I hate football but it’s not my passion.
« I arrive in the morning at the training ground at 10.30 and I start to be professional. I finish at one o’clock and I don’t play football afterwards. When I am at work, I do my job 100%. But after, I am like a tourist in London. I have my Oyster card and I take the tube. I eat.
« I don’t understand why everybody lies. The president of my former club Lens, Gervais Martel, said I left because I got more money in England, that I didn’t care about the shirt. I said: ‘Is there one player in the world who signs for a club and says, Oh, I love your shirt?’ Your shirt is red. I love it. He doesn’t care. The first thing that you speak about is the money.
« Martel said I go to England for the money but why do players come to his club? Because they look nice? All people, everyone, when they go to a job, it’s for the money. So I don’t understand why, when I said I play for the money, people were shocked. Oh, he’s a mercenary. Every player is like that. »
Assou-Ekotto describes life in the Premier League as following the plot lines to a film. « You read the paper, it’s like a movie, » he says. The 26-year-old is referring to the more scurrilous stories on the news pages. « Very bizarre … only in England. That’s why football is not my passion because when you are professional, the world of football is not good. There are people around you only because you play football; the girls, the same. I have my girlfriend, who I met when I was 18, 19, and I do not want to lose her because when you are a footballer it’s not good to meet a new girl at 26. »
What of his relationship with Tottenham team-mates? « I have a good feeling with [Aaron] Lennon and [Jermain] Defoe, more these two players but I have a feeling with everybody. I have a problem with nobody. But I have nobody on the phone, except [Adel] Taarabt, who is on loan at QPR and I know from Lens. I only call him. I don’t call footballers in my team. I don’t believe in friendships in football. »
Assou-Ekotto’s father, David, introduced him to the game. He had come from Cameroon to France as a 16-year-old to play professionally for Nice and when later he became the coach of Roclincourt & Beaurin, an amateur team, Assou-Ekotto followed them every weekend. It was as much the fear, however, of a modestly paid life within the four walls of an office that drove him to make the sacrifices to become a footballer.
« I knew for a fact that I didn’t like school and I also knew that I didn’t want to work in an office where I would be paid €1,500-a-month and, at the end of my career, be able to buy a little suburban apartment or something, » he says. « Where it became definitive for me was at 16, when I was expelled from school because I was no longer paying attention. I had nothing to fall back on and this forms part of my attitude to football. I give it my very best, being as efficient and professional as possible, because it’s all that I have. »
Assou-Ekotto argues that his attitude to the job ought not to concern Tottenham’s fans because he always switches on his total commitment in matches and training. « Whatever attitude you bring to it, it doesn’t matter as long as you are 100% professional, the coach can say: ‘He is good enough,’ and you are prepared to lose a tooth or an eye for the club, which I am, » he says.
Assou-Ekotto has thrived under Harry Redknapp but things were more difficult under previous Tottenham managers Martin Jol and Juande Ramos, with whom he had problems. He also lost any respect for Damien Comolli, the club’s ex-sporting director, who brought him from Lens in June 2006.
« Comolli, oh la la, la la, » Assou-Ekotto says, having let out a long, low whistle. « I have one simple rule; try to be a man all your life. I said to Comolli that I had a problem with Jol but he said it was all in my head. But then, after Jol left, he said: ‘Yes, there was a problem.’ Try to be a man!
« With Jol, he had a hierarchy within the team, everybody didn’t have the same starting point. He also said to me that I didn’t smile a lot. Ramos was always picking little fights. He told me that I was too aggressive in training. I said, ‘We don’t do tennis, we play football. You think that we are in Spain but we are in England, my friend’.
« With Harry, it’s cool. We don’t speak a lot and he doesn’t care if I smile or if I know who the next team we play is. If I do my job well, it’s OK. He is doing simple things that the previous two managers couldn’t even think of. He is straightforward and he doesn’t play games. »
Assou-Ekotto is beginning to look ahead to the World Cup finals with Cameroon. Although he was born in France and has a French mother, there has never been any issue over his allegiance. Like many young people in France born to an immigrant parent or parents, he feels that « the country does not want us to be part of this new France. So we identify ourselves more with our roots.
« Me playing for Cameroon was a natural and normal thing. I have no feeling for the France national team; it just doesn’t exist. When people ask of my generation in France, ‘Where are you from?’, they will reply Morocco, Algeria, Cameroon or wherever. But what has amazed me in England is that when I ask the same question of people like Lennon and Defoe, they’ll say: ‘I’m English.’ That’s one of the things that I love about life here. »
Before South Africa Assou-Ekotto is on the brink of history with Tottenham. They entertain Bolton Wanderers this afternoon, with a place in next season’s Champions League within their grasp. « It would be good for the team, the club and the supporters … they’d enjoy it, » he says. « But for me, it would be just another set of games. When we play Liverpool and Chelsea, it’s like the Champions League anyway so for me … »
David Hytner
