United Now

“I think social media affects you,” Mikaël said. “Everyone says they don’t consult them but you have to, and you’re just curious to know what people think of you. It’s important not to obsess over that, which is hard to assess. when you’re a player, when you’ve just turned 20, playing in the first team and under intense scrutiny.”

“Yourself, your performance and your private life are exposed, so I think it would have been difficult [pour moi]. But the fact that I’m settled with my wife has helped me and I also think that the manager has been a good policeman in this regard has also helped me. In a good way. I use that word because in my day gamers were just starting to have their own websites, so I was tempted to, and I did. Someone was taking care of a page for me.”

“In the beginning, we were doing interviews following every game. It was like, I don’t know, 10 questions following every game. On the phone, someone would jot them down, and then we’d post them on the site the next day, probably. But then it started to get picked up by the tabloids, you know the papers and when it was translated the boss might read it. And with some of them he was not happy at all. You know, when you say ‘I don’t think we did well’, he thought only he might tell.”

“So for me, it was my interview on my website and then it was on the back page of the newspaper, so I got the hair dryer twice. So I closed the website right following! “