Dimitri Payet: From Reunion to West Ham United

By on April 4, 2016

Dimitri Payet grew up on the small, isolated island of Reunion in the Indian Ocean – an island over five hundred miles off the coast of Madagascar and around 1,5000 miles from mainland Africa, and just thirty square miles in size. Nevertheless, Reunion hosts a thriving football community and its own professional football league with four teams. The league is under the watch of the French Football Federation and has produced seven Ligue 1 players.

Before Payet was ever bamboozling Premier League opponents or whipping in incredible free-kicks from long distance, he was a young boy practicing his technique and free-kicks in Reunion. At the age of just twelve years old, he traveled halfway around the world to play in France for Ligue 2 club Le Havre’s famed academy.

Yet at such a tender age, he had trouble adapting to a different culture and was devastated when he was let go by the club at the age of sixteen, told he was too small and not good enough for Le Havre’s senior team.

He returned to Reunion, many thousands of miles away, and his dreams were crushed.

“I thought the dream was over,” Payet said in an interview with The Guardian. “I had spent four years at Le Havre and when they told me I wasn’t good enough for the second division, it hit me hard. I didn’t even want to hear talk about me ever going back to France. I was quite traumatised by the experience and the decision not to keep me. I just wanted to stay on my island and play football there.”

“I don’t blame Le Havre. Back then I wasn’t an easy person to handle. I was always one of the first to mess around. So there were a lot of reasons why my adventure stopped at that point.”

The island was his home, where he could isolate himself from the rest of the world and focus on his football. He played for local side AS Excelsior, one of the best clubs on the island. At the age of just sixteen, he was a starter, and the experience toughened him up. He learned how to take hits and physically grew into his own.

Mentally, however, he was still weary to return to Europe with an offer from Nantes in 2005. He was still a teenager.

“When a second chance came along I argued about it with my dad and my uncle Jean-Marc and they convinced me I should try my luck again,” he said. “And they were right. I accepted for my dad, in particular, because football is his passion and he never got the opportunity to go beyond Réunion. Having that idea in my head helped me stay strong in Nantes.”

At Nantes, he was a part of a documentary, L’Académie du Foot, documenting the rise of their academy team. He was soft-spoken, modest in his ability, but still had the tendency to flare up in heated moments. Still, nobody quite knew how to mature Payet into a professional footballer and his hot-headedness didn’t help.

“That documentary is important to me today because it reminds me what I was like 10 years ago and shows how far hard work has taken me in that time,” said Payet.

Quickly, though, Payet emerged as the jewel of the academy. In the fourth episode of the show, Payet was called up to the senior team and made his professional debut against Bordeaux. “Just do what you’re capable of doing,” said Nantes manager Serge Le Dizet. “That’s what you came for, isn’t it? So play. If you come on, go past people, probe, help us push [them] backwards.”

Mentally, Payet had to forget about second guessing himself. Only then did he blossom into the footballer he is today. After impressing at Nantes, he was picked up by Saint-Etienne and fully broke into the first team. In 129 appearances over the course of three years at the French club, he scored nineteen goals.

He then moved to Lille, where he spent two years from 2011, then transferred to Marseille in 2013, where he worked under Marcelo Bielsa. He worked under Marcelo Beisla, who helped him mature into the footballer he is today.

“Bielsa made me become more mature and more consistent,” Payet told L’Equipe. “He taught me to know when to play simple and when to try to provoke something… He put some order in my game. I still have his advice in my head and it’ll serve me until the end of my career.

“We were doing an attack against defense drill at training,” the player remembered. “I was a bit in and out, then towards the end more out. Just as the hour was up, I made a good move, the only one of the session for me. Jan [van Winkel] congratulated me. This is when Marcelo blew his top: ‘Why are you congratulating him? All he’s done is mess about since the start!’ I was left out of the squad for the next match.”

He spent two further years at Marseille and developed a good relationship with Bielsa. He played seventy-two matches and scored fifteen goals in two seasons at the club.

Payet’s exit last summer was forced by Marseille’s economic woes and despite interest from Juventus, he moved to West Ham United with the advice of former teammate Joe Cole.

“It wasn’t a difficult decision at all,” he told the Independent. “If I was four or five years older I might have considered it but I still think I have some great years ahead of me and am eager to keep improving and keep pushing West Ham higher.”

Having never played professionally outside of France, he was underrated and under-appreciated in the Premier League. Yet that has changed eight months and a plethora of fantastic free-kick goals later. No man in the Premier League is currently better on a set piece than Payet and his latest goal against Crystal Palace was out of this world.

At the age of twenty-nine, he is in the form of his life and leading West Ham’s charge for a Champions League position.

“I have enjoyed the responsibility and feel that it motivates me,” he told Four Four Two.

“It helps me to perform consistently. When I was injured the team did suffer but many other attacking players were missing as well.

He told the Guardian: “I still try to treat football as a game even if there are now other considerations at stake, especially economic ones. I try to put on a show while being effective because the spectators come to be entertained by beautiful play.”

Finally, the world of football recognizes his impressive talents and he is now vying for a place in France’s Euro 2016 squad. On form alone, he should be a sure bet to make Didier Deschamps’ squad and was called up to France’s latest international friendlies.

Yet he still feels somewhat disconnected from the national team.

“I do not understand what is expected of me, and I’ve said so,” he said, per Goal.com. “But not to be named in the France squad does not prevent me from living. Even if I think about it, I’m not kneeling before my TV waiting on the list. I’m in a dream in England today. If the national team makes me unhappy, I don’t want it.”

It’s France’s loss, though. Having taken Payet under his wing, West Ham boss Slaven Bilic is reaping the rewards as West Ham climb ever higher in the table, modeling their rise on that of Leicester City.

Homepage photo credit: By Ludovic Péron (Own work) [CC BY-SA 3.0], via Wikimedia Commons

About Alex Morgan

Alex Morgan, founder of Football Every Day, lives and breaths football from the West Coast of the United States in California. Aside from founding Football Every Day in January of 2013, Alex has also launched his own journalism career and hopes to help others do the same with FBED. He covers the San Jose Earthquakes as a beat reporter for QuakesTalk.com and his work has also been featured in the BBC's Match of the Day Magazine.