“There’s a kid at Monaco. Anthony Martial. For sure, in a short while, you’ll all be talking about him.”



I’d known about Anthony for two years. In the 2013/14 season, I went to AS Monaco on loan for a year from Sampdoria in Italy. Anthony was still very young, just a kid - I think he was 17 years old at that time - but you could already see that he was that he was a special player with lots of class and lots of talent. The kid was a natural.



You’d just be amazed at the things he would do in the training sessions.

You could see he was a young boy with a huge amount of ability and great strength. He had great quality with his feet and great skill. At the same time he was very explosive too, when he got hold of the ball.



He’s always had the quality to finish in a one on one with the keeper or also to move the ball out of his feet and hit it hard. Right from when I first saw him he’s been able do that with consummate ease.

At that time in Monaco, he was just waiting to explode. He was a fresh talent who was at any moment about to show everyone what he could do on a football pitch. He had advice from everyone. Everyone really liked him and thought a lot of him.



One of the players who would always be speaking with him was Eric Abidal. Eric would chat with him and tell him things that would help him to stay relaxed as he was still a youngster, and Eric was older and had more experienced.

Eric is a funny guy and someone you can have a real laugh with, but he also makes you train really hard too; he can give you perfect instructions on what best to do in training. I think that Anthony learned a lot from him as well as from a lot of the other team mates that were at Monaco at the time.



It’s tough not to learn from a great finisher like Falcao, for example. He’s pure quality when it comes to putting the ball in the net. Falcao is just great at converting chances, so I’m pretty sure that in the time that he and Falcao were together in the dressing room, Anthony would have been observing a lot in order to keep developing as a player.