At Suresnes football club in the Parisian suburbs, just across the River Seine from Bois de Boulogne, they still remember N’Golo Kante arriving as a nine-year-old.
Jeunesse Sportive de Suresnes is only an amateur club. Indeed Pierre Ville, club secretary and coach, and Francois Missana, a first-team coach, have to spend some time counting through the different leagues above them before eventually deciding that they now play in the ninth tier of French football.
And yet remarkably this is the club at which the man now touted as the best player in the Premier League played until just six years ago.