Jean-Clair Todibo is a Premier League target – but accident could have halted football career
Manchester United were interested last summer and may come calling again. Tottenham Hotspur made an inquiry in January, and there is no doubt that Jean-Clair Todibo will be in demand when the transfer window opens next month.
And yet one of the best defenders in Ligue 1, where he has excelled at Nice, was once told that he would never play football again. Aged nine, on his way to judo practice with his older sister he was struck by a car. “There were lots of injuries – multiple fractures to my legs, there were fears that I might lose my leg. I was in a coma for three days,” Todibo says.
When he finally came round there was only one thing on his mind.
“The first question I had for the doctor was ‘Do you think I will be able to play football again?’ and he said ‘no’. He said it would be too complicated,” Todibo explains. “It was tough to take but I just said to myself ‘oh, he’s lying to me. I am going to prove him wrong’. I was determined to play again and two years later I was able to do so.”
It is an extraordinary story even if, as he talks about it in perfect English, largely learnt from watching the “addictive” TV show Game of Thrones, Todibo puts his belief down to being so young.
“When you are young you don’t fully understand,” Todibo says. “I was just like ‘I am going to play, it’s my dream and I just want to play with my friends’. In truth it was only when I was 15, 16 that I started to be more aware of what had happened.”
By then Todibo, who grew up in the Seine-Saint-Denis banlieue in Paris – having been born in Cayenne, the capital of French Guyana – was starting to be noticed. “It was not like the Paris dream, you know! But it was good for me and I appreciated it a lot. There are a lot of football players from that area,” he says.
Among them are Moussa Diaby – now at Aston Villa – and Monaco’s Youssouf Fofana. “There are a lot of memories. The first time we got together with the French national team we talked about it. It was cool,” Todibo adds.
At that age – and despite not having a background in academy football – he had a trial at Manchester United, for a week, and before that, one at Nottingham Forest. “It was a good experience,” he says. “I discovered a little bit what the professional world was like.” His main memory is being at United, in February 2016, when Marcus Rashford made his debut in the Europa League and burst onto the scene.
Instead Todibo joined Toulouse. By 18 he had made his first-team debut. Within a year he was signed by Barcelona – after playing just 876 minutes of first-team football. “I was really young but it was like a dream come true,” he says. In terms of his football, he was ready to play. But it was a big move. “Outside of football I was not prepared for what it is like to be at this type of club; this type of big club. I think I was a little bit too young. I had come into the professional world a little bit late. At 16, I was still in my ‘hood’. It was a big gap for me and it happened very quickly,” Todibo says.
Unsurprisingly he struggled for game-time – ahead of more experienced defenders such as Gerard Pique, Samuel Umtiti and Clement Lenglet – but was brave enough to go out on loan to Schalke 04 in Germany, then Benfica in Portugal before Nice. It meant by 24 he had played in four major European leagues.
“It’s been good for me because I have learned different cultures and worked with different coaches. So now I think I have more weapons. I am more prepared about big things. I think my mind is more ready to be at a big club and it has, for sure, made me a better player,” he says.
‘Todibo is a true defender’
Certainly Julien Sable, Nice’s assistant manager who is something of a mentor to Todibo, is in no doubt as to his ability. “His first quality is that he is a top-level athlete who combines power with speed. He moves so gracefully that it looks like he’s flying at high speed,” the former St-Etienne midfielder says.
“He also has very good technique, especially under pressure. He has made great progress in ball distribution….JC is a true defender: he hates being passed, loves one-v-ones, and duels. He likes to face the best forwards, it’s what motivates him.”
Mention by Todibo of a “big club” turns the attention, again, back to his future. He is naturally coy to discuss it publicly but, clearly, his reasoning behind joining Nice, initially on loan an then permanently, was to “grab some minutes and play football” and get his promising career back on track, which he has done.
“Honestly I don’t want to talk about [my future] because of my respect for the fans here and the club also. But we had a little discussion, for sure,” he says when asked about United and Tottenham.
Does what happened to him in the past mean he must be more careful about making another big move? “I think that’s not the reason. The reason was I was 18 when I went to Barcelona. Now I am 24, I am married, I have two kids,” he argues. “My mind is different. I am a national team player. I have to think a little bit more. The life that I want to have means I’m much more thoughtful about what I do.”
Nevertheless he has closely followed the impact his friend, and former team-mate at Nice, where he was on loan, William Saliba has made since establishing himself at Arsenal.
“I played against him when we were young. He was playing for St-Etienne, I was playing for Toulouse. Then we played together at Nice for six months and now we are playing together in the French national team,” Todibo says, adding he had tried to persuade Saliba to remain longer at Nice.
“For sure, I wanted him to stay another year. But he is playing very well at Arsenal. Last season was a fantastic one for him,” he says.
Ultimately it has been a disappointing season for Nice – who had been second, but finished fifth – but they did have the strongest defence, with Todibo at the heart of it, conceding four fewer goals than the champions Paris St-Germain.
Whether Todibo stays at Nice remains to be seen. Sable has no doubt about what he can achieve. “His potential is unlimited in my opinion,” he says. “He has the potential of a Champions League player and an international-class player. He has the qualities to go all the way to the top. I have no doubt about his ability to reach great heights. This season, he has proven that he can deliver in big matches and has gained consistency. He is on the right path.”
And Todibo himself? “My ambition is to play in the best competitions in the world and try to be the best version of me,” he explains. “Try to be the best defender, for sure, that I can be.”
