“We’re the first team in history to stay up after taking one point from the first seven games. That’s going to shut certain people up.” After Montpellier all but sealed Ligue 1 safety last week by demolishing already-relegated Troyes, midfielder Ryad Boudebouz can’t have been the only member of the dressing room to have felt a certain vindication. His coach Frédéric Hantz, brought in to preside over the rescue at the end of January after nearly two years out of the game, was more circumspect but coming from a similar headspace when he underlined minutes earlier that the season had been a “trying” one.
This week sealed the deal beyond mathematical doubt, as Hantz’s team racked up a third straight league win, against another set of erstwhile relegation rivals, Reims. That they have now reached 46 points not only places the 2012 champions above two other struggling recent winners in Marseille and Bordeaux, but means that a top-half finish is still possible.
Few deserve this moment of validation – and respiration – as much as Boudebouz. In a season where there have been plenty of headlines about one left-footed playmaker of North African heritage finding redemption, that of another has slipped below the radar despite a series of performances which have ultimately made the difference between safety and collapse.
Boudebouz may never have been quite as feted as Hatem Ben Arfa, but wondering quite how he ended up here at the age of 26 will elicit at least a mild interval of head scratching. Coming through the same vaunted Sochaux youth academy as Jérémy Ménez and Benoît Pedretti, Boudebouz was 18 when he made his Ligue 1 debut for the club in 2008.
By then, he had already played for France at under-17 and under-19 level, but pledged his international loyalty to Algeria while still a teenager, after an approach by the legendary coach Rabah Saâdane. By the time he was 21, he had become the youngest player to win respected Algerian football website DZFoot’s player of the year award, having recorded 8 goals and 8 assists during a 2010/11 campaign in which he didn’t miss a game. In that season, Sochaux finished fifth, just two points behind Paris Saint-Germain, and qualified for the Europa League.
Former Sochaux coach – and long-time academy boss – Éric Hély, who never completely saw eye-to-eye with Boudebouz, was nevertheless always a huge admirer of his talent. “Technically,” Hély recently told L’Equipe, “he’s one of the strongest that we’ve had here, alongside Jérémy Ménez and Ivan Perisic.” Later, as Sochaux’s star began to wane, many (including Hély) thought that Boudebouz lacked the stomach for a relegation fight.
That theory overlooks the fact that Les Lionceaux had haemorrhaged players at an alarming rate, with Boudebouz one of the few of genuine quality left while still being a young man, rather than a seasoned leader. It also plugs into the sense that he’s not quite intense enough to reach the elite level, that he lacks the level of obsession on and off the pitch to become the very best.
One such story used to illustrate that is Boudebouz’s rejection of an approach from Manchester United when aged just 16. “Manchester? It’s flattering,” Boudebouz said during his time at Sochaux, “but I didn’t want to spend three years being miserable in the reserves.”
.jpg "Brilliant Boudebouz Seals Montpellier Safety")
That sounds less like a lack of motivation and more like an early display of common sense. Despite Boudebouz’s laid-back image, he is a player who has done the hard yards. He is rarely injured, and in his past six seasons at Sochaux, Bastia and Montpellier, has never completed less than 2,300 minutes in a season. This campaign’s 3,071 for Montpellier is the most he’s played since his debut season as a regular, in 2009/10.
In a struggling side, Boudebouz has complied career-best assist figures, reaching 11 for the season – only Zlatan Ibrahimovic and Ángel Di María have more - by laying on a hat-trick of them at Reims on Saturday. In doing so, he became the first Montpellier player to register 3 assists in the same game since Olivier Giroud did so in the 4-0 win over Lorient in December 2011, en route to La Paillade’s shock Ligue 1 title win.
Boudebouz has flourished under Hantz, and come through when his team really needed him. Of those assists, 7 of them have come in the last 11 games, starting with the one in the 2-0 win over Toulouse in February to give club legend Souleymane Camara’s clincher right near the end of the match.
Montpellier had begun that game in the bottom three, a point from safety. They are now 10 clear of trouble, having collected 20 points in the intervening period. Safety might have been sealed sooner, with Boudebouz’s provision of key passes at a clear career high of 3.2 per match. Unfortunately, Hantz doesn’t have the forwards to match his creative conduit’s brilliance. 33-year-old Camara’s goal at the weekend was his seventh of the campaign. The promising Casimir Ninga has 6, but hasn’t scored since December.
Maybe, just maybe this season will finally change opinions of Boudebouz as all flair and not enough grit. His stamina, as mentioned above, is not in question, but you wonder if the surprise move to Bastia, seen as unusual and underwhelming at the time, has been a turning point for him. Coach Ghislain Printant used Boudebouz as a deep-lying midfielder for much of last season, teaching him exactly how to make the most of his underrated lung capacity. His tidiness on the ball helped to knit Bastia together as they too pulled away from the bottom.
Now, Hantz has not a talent on his hands, but a player who he can build his team around. With Boudebouz one of the division’s most underrated players, the coach does at least have a hope of doing so.
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