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The Humble Journey of Pierre-Emerick Aubameyang to Europe’s Most Wanted Striker
- Updated: September 12, 2016
Modesty reaps a rich harvest, and football stadiums don’t come much more humble than the Stade Gaston Gerard in Dijon, France. A neat venue holding just more than 16,000 at capacity, it plays host to plucky tenants Dijon FCO, who toil away in the unassuming reaches of France’s second tier.
The Gaston Gerard has spent little time under the glare of the world’s spotlight. It is a world away from the football amphitheatres in Paris to the north-west and Lyon to the south. This is a modest place, but it is where our story begins.
In 2008, AC Milan were looking for a discrete environment to dispatch on loan a young forward who had shown promise in their Primavera youth setup.
Pierre-Emerick Aubameyang, born to a former Gabon international in Laval in the west of France, had arrived energetic and raw at Milan’s football academy in January 2007. That energy stayed coiled—briefly. Then, in August of his debut year in Milan, something snapped.
The G-14’s Champions Youth Cup was being held in Malaysia, and one man took all the headlines. Aubameyang hit all seven of Milan’s goals—in just six games—as his side finished fourth in the 16-team tournament, which featured under-19 sides from Barcelona, Juventus and Manchester United.
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His third goal—a delicious, dipping 12-yard volley over Arsenal’s Wojciech Szczesny in Milan’s final group game at Kedah’s sprawling Darul Aman Stadium—was of such audacious self-assurance as to cast the die there and then.
It was not a false dawn. But despite such early promise, Aubameyang took an indirect route to the finish line—he had new circumstances to master, lest they become the master of him and his precocious talent should splutter out.
His award-winning performance (Aubameyang won the Roberto Bettega Trophy as top scorer) in Malaysia wasn’t an arrival; rather, it was a flash of potential before the start of a long, character-building journey.
Laval is a peaceable, old-world place in the Mayenne department of France, less than 200 miles south-west of Paris.
The medieval Chateau de Laval watches over the town as it stretches out down the Mayenne River toward Tours, the city whose Ligue 2 side were the visitors to Dijon the day Aubameyang scored his first goal in professional football.
Quaint, quiet Laval has no more prolific sporting export, but this is a story of diffident beginnings.
Eight minutes into his first game in professional football—for Dijon at RC Lens—there were signs of what was to come; a devastating drop of the shoulder and spin away from his marker in the season’s opening game had Aubameyang bearing down on goal, only for the impetuousness of youth to defeat him as he hurried his finish and squandered the chance.
It was part of a miserable beginning to the 2008/09 season for Dijon, which brought successive defeats against Lens and Strasbourg.
Against Ajaccio a week later, the frustration mounted. Dijon continued to struggle for goals as their new man from Milan was booked and then quickly hooked off in a prosaic 1-1 draw which left them mired in no man’s land.
That decision was the call of ex-Yugoslavia defender Faruk Hadzibegic, a Bosnian with connections to Milan via his former international team-mates Zvonimir Boban and Dejan Savicevic, and who had recently been installed as manager at Dijon.
“He was only 19 when he arrived in Dijon” Hadzibegic told African magazine Jeune Afrique, “but already at that age his speed and sense of purpose were interesting. Some of my team-mates from Yugoslavia were at Milan at the time so I had good information on him.”
Hadzibegic retained faith in his young acquisition, keeping him in the lineup for the Ligue 2 visit of Tours on August 22. Just over 3,000 fans spread among 12,000 or so empty seats at the Gaston Gerard were restlessly watching a sleepy match drift towards a goalless draw when, on 65 minutes, Aubameyang pounced to flash Dijon into the lead.
The hosts dug in to steal a 2-1 win, their first of the season. Three weeks later, when he thrashed home an 89th-minute winner at home to Montpellier, the town of Dijon had a new hero.
The loan system, and the building of short-term homes to provide young players with technical and emotional support, demands delicate …
