Speaking in an exclusive interview with Get French Football News, Amiens and Norway international Haitam Aleesami talked extensively about being a modern full-back, Erling Braut Haaland, adventures in Italy and much more.
You grew up in Norway to Moroccan parents…
Yes that is absolutely correct, in the late 80s.
Was it a happy childhood in the sense that you never felt restricted. Sometimes parents are reticent to back their child’s dream of becoming a professional footballer, owing to the odds of success in this business being stacked against you from day one.
They were always supportive, I’ve got to admit that. As long as I did well in school, to be honest, that was it. If I was a bad boy at school, they told me I won’t play football. I think for like 7 years my father was the coach of the team, so it was the same rule for all the players. He was a teacher as well, he’d say: “Guys I know the importance of school, if you guys are doing well, you’ll be able to play football. If your teacher says that you are not doing your homework, just being a bad kid in school, you’ll be out.” That taught us discipline, early.
Were there any difficult moments with teammates, knowing that your dad was the coach?
No! They loved him, he was almost like a second father to them too because he was so supportive. Always there for us. I never had that kind of problem and still today they are talking about those moments. Like back in the day, they just miss him, like top memories. In Norway, we have this kind of thing that everybody should play a lot, he was like kind of fair. We rotated a lot, even me, he put me on the bench sometimes, I was so pissed. I used to say: “I am your son!” And he would say: “Listen, this is how it is, everyone has got to to play. Accept it.”
Is it fair to say that your dad was very much the early footballing inspiration – the person you looked up to?
Yeah you could definitely say so. He never really played professionally or something like that, but he loves the sport. And he used to go out with me, I was 4 or 5 years old, and we used to play just me and him. That’s how it all started. Then I went to school and he told me he wanted to become a coach and follow me up. That’s the beginning of the story.
When you were a kid, did you play at full-back?
No, I mean I was a midfielder for many years. I think it was until 2011. Central midfielder, #6 or #8. When I was younger I could player as a midfielder or a striker, I preferred midfielder because I wanted the ball so much. And then in 2011, when I used to play for Skeid, a team in Oslo, our left-back got injured, was out and I was the only one who was left-footed. The coach told me, can you take one for the team, until he comes back. And the rest is history. I did really well and a lot of clubs were like: “Who is this technical guy on the left side?” And I used to dribble a lot at that time, I’ve kind of changed my play now, I just want to play possession football, a few touches and just keep the ball, but that time, the coach used to tell me: “Finish your man, challenge him as often as you can.” I did the same at Fredrikstad, Göteborg and then Italy changed me a bit.
Talk to us about the less obvious differences between Serie A and Ligue 1 – Italy is of course slower, a little less physical, but more tactical.
Like you said, it is a bit slower and a bit more tactical, but I found it more difficult to play in Italy. You have to be intelligent, you have to have patience as a person, you always play for the team. I feel like in France, especially as a winger or a striker, you are more free to try to challenge almost every time you’ve got the ball. And if you get dispossessed 10 times out of 10, that’s not a problem. If you do that in Italy, the next game you won’t play. Here in France, it is more like one vs one, less tactical, things go faster, a lot of talent, a lot of challenges, open games. It is absolutely different.
I understand the Italians now. You look at the national team back in the day, maybe they weren’t the most talented squad, but still they won the World Cup, just because of tactics. At the end of the day, it’s a team sport, it is not individual. Some teams might have individuals who are world class, that might change the game for you, but when you play for a team like Amiens, who sometimes against better clubs you run a lot, the moment we win it, is the moment we have to be smarter to keep it too. That doesn’t mean to be the kid when you are young, trying to dribble past five or six players. I used to do that as a kid, but it is not realistic today.
The Italian way is almost more perfect right, it’s about minimising possible mistakes and eliminating risk. It really depends on what you view the point of football to be: is it to create moments of individual magic, when Gaël Kakuta dribbles past four people and sticks the ball in the back of the net, to use an Amiens reference, or is it about waiting, phases of play taking longer, looking to carve out opportunities but being fundamentally cautious.
Yeah exactly – in Italy the build-up takes much longer. The clubs that really want to play, I followed Sarri at Napoli back in the day, now at Juve, and (Roberto) De Zerbi, I used to have him as a coach for 3-4 months at Palermo, now at Sassuolo. They just want to play with the goalkeeper, if they get high pressure no worries, they still keep playing and for me that is proper football. Move it, one, two touches, move the body, find spaces and I remember even in Palermo, so many players got so much better and understood football in a different way when we had him for 4 months.
The Italian football, the old school one, just tactics and defending and counter-attacking, that’s about to die out in Italy. More and more coaches are trying to really play. To be honest, I really fell in love with that kind of football, Pep Guardiola kind of football. It’s not easy, it is a project, you have to be super disciplined. You have to at some point expect mistakes and at the same time accept it. It is football, not FIFA where you can just pass, pass, pass and put the ball in the back of the net.
With that in mind, explain to us what Amiens manager Luka Elsner’s philosophy is.
A lot of things we’ve been working on I’ve seen it before in Italy. When it comes to tactics, how to defend and attack, and in the beginning it really worked well. I was feeling like: “Yeah, we can have a really interesting season.” And then, we struggled with the results, which I think did something to us as a group mentally. Because, the moments in the beginning where we won games and drew to top teams, we were going out to play football, to play our game no matter what happened. Out there to try to win the game.
And with the time, starting to lose games, we were saying: “Guys, we can’t concede goals and we have to win this game.” We put unnecessary pressure on ourselves, and it became like no more risks, we have to take three points. It just changed everything. Instead of being offensive and focusing on our play, we got more careful. This guy is a good winger and focusing on this and that, more on the opposition than ourselves. All of these small details that change everything I believe.
So when you first started to have these poor results, was there a shift in focus on the coaching side to looking at the opposition more closely?
I mean not even from the coach, I mean from us players. You know how players are, we discuss football between us more than with any other person, coaches, family members. It is us in the dressing room, us on the pitch, us in training. We always have a team talk right before games and like if you see the team talks in the beginning of the season, it was just different, from the ones that came later. Obviously the coach continued to work on the same things, there was one period, we conceded too many goals, especially on set pieces, so we had to work more on that, but we were still working on making the players better. It is not like he just wanted to defend and take three points no matter the cost.
It’s funny because there is a contradiction there as well: “We need the 3 points, but we also absolutely cannot concede.” And when you have a team squad’s make up like the one you have at Amiens that is, in attack, very much focused on individual quality, the risk factor of doubting that style of play, compared to doubting the style of play in say Italy where everyone is not taking risks, clear vision, everyone’s patient, the risk factor, when you are relying on individuals to make moments of magic, is so much higher. In the bottom 10, Amiens from an attacking perspective is in the top two or three sides in terms of raw quality of attacking talent. But it is as you say, that issue, when that seed of doubt creeps in, and you start second guessing everything. I think you diagnosed that really really well.
What are you guys doing now, are you being sent briefings, things to look at on the tactical side of the game, or is it just individual fitness regime stuff for the moment?
At the moment we are just working on the individual fitness. We are preparing to start playing games, maybe in May, but we are trying to keep our fitness, even though it is not easy to maintain that fitness of playing 90 minutes, because everything we do is individual. They sent us a link to see the statistics on how many passes you did, mistakes, how many times you lost the ball, duels won. We’ve all got WyScout, but when it comes tactical stuff, for now they haven’t sent anything. My guess is that the staff are working maybe looking through all the chances and goals conceded, and then will show us if we’ll meet soon, everything to us, if not, send it to us.
Do you like WyScout as a tool? Do you find it helpful?
Absolutely. I feel like that, since I started with individual videos in 2011 back in Norway. It helps you a lot, because the things you see on the videos, sometimes, especially when I was younger, I didn’t know that I made a mistake when it came to positioning. When the coach over and over showed all the situations that, especially as a full-back, I was a new full-back. On the pitch, the next games, I had the image in my head, speaking to yourself: “Last time I did wrong, here, here and here.”
So, step by step, I got better, I even got better in Italy, because they have some crazy details on how to defend. There are experts, that took it to the next level. Even though I played for a team that got relegated, I had five coaches in my first year. And I learned a lot from each one of them.
What was the singular best piece of advice you had in improving your defending in Italy?
That’s a hard one. What I remember the most, the posture of the body, so that you can see the whole pitch or the other strikers or attacking players the whole time. They want to make sure that you move your head a lot, that you see what is coming behind you. Especially when it comes to defending crosses, but always on your toes, you see so many defenders getting the ball in behind them and they are not even ready. As a defender, they always want us to expect the balls to come in behind. Before Italy, I wasn’t that awake to all this. It was like each single day on training, that taught me all the details.
What did you expect when you decided to join Amiens this summer?
After three years at Palermo, to be honest, I just needed stability. After my first year at Palermo, I wanted to leave the club, I even told the club after six months in January that this is not what I expected and this is not professional at all what’s going on here. We had like three or four Sporting Directors in the first year, five different coaches, that means five different fitness coaches, assistant coaches.
So, we never really had a group as well. Yeah, coaches come and go, but at the end of the day, the players stay. If you don’t have a group, you will never be able to win games. I found out that this was not for me. The first thing you learn in Scandinavia is the team comes first. So put the team first, that was absolutely not something that happened in Palermo. Even though (Maurizio) Zamparini got good offers, he didn’t want to sell me, like all the players. Saying that he wanted to get the team back in Serie A, we didn’t succeed, not the first year, not the second year. And then the club went bankrupt.
Which was a really sad thing, a lot of people lost their jobs.
As players, could you see the club’s bankruptcy coming?
Yes, I feel like we could see it coming. They changed ownership so many times and so many strange things happened. At the end of the day, we could see it coming. After Italy, I told myself I just need stability. I am still missing 4 months of salary, that I reckon we are not going to get. It is still ongoing, but they told us it can take up to five or six years to maybe recover something.
After that, I just wanted to go somewhere and play football. Amiens is a small club but I talked to John Williams (Sporting Director), like before we sign any players, when I talked to him, he was about to sign a coach, Luka (Elsner). So right after they signed him, he told me and said that he wanted to get the deal done. I was really interested, I was talking to some other clubs, and it was kind of early, but I wanted to be there from day 1 of pre-season.
I heard words (from agents): “We might be able to do something more interesting, bigger clubs,” and this and that. And I said like listen, I just want to play football and this is what we got on the table right now. There were another two or three clubs in Greece and Turkey and I said I want to stay in one of those top 5 leagues and this is what I have got on the table and I will just go for it. Get to know France, the country and the football. And that was it.
Personally, it has been a good period to learn something new and obviously we’ve still got a challenge. And for me, we’ve got a more than strong enough team to stay in Ligue 1. With 10 games to play, I still believe that we have a good chance.
What do you feel about Picardy as a region?
Amiens as a city is small, but still the people love to go out, sitting at cafés and eating a lot outside, especially in the summer, you can see the restaurants are full. It takes us 1 hour and 15 minutes to get to Paris, so when we have days off most of the time me and my team-mates we just go to Paris to have a nice dinner. To change the environment a bit.
Did you make friends very fast? And who are the guys who you hit it off with immediately?
We have good guys, we have a nice group. We are all friends. It was easy to get in, come into this family club. It was absolutely easy with Eddy (Gnahoré) on the team (the pair played together at Palermo) and three other Swedish guys on the team, in Emil Krafth before he moved to Newcastle, Saman Ghoddos and Jack Lahne. I knew Emil from before, I’d played against Saman and Jack was this young guy that I didn’t know from before but I knew who he was, because he was this big new talent in Sweden.
It was easy to come into the group. Prince (Gouano) was the captain before he got this inflammation that set him out, he is Eddy’s cousin, and he is a really good leader, he tried to make all the new players feel at home. Telling us how the system is in Amiens and how they are working, this and that. Just to make sure you feel at home.
Prince Gouano is a very under-appreciated player in the division. He also faced an abhorrent incident of racism against Dijon last season. You’ve obviously come from Palermo and spent three years in a country currently known for seeing the worst of this in the top 5 divisions. Did you experience any instances during your time in Italy?
No, to be honest. I’ve never experienced that. We had one coloured player, but he never really played that much at that time. So to be honest, we didn’t experience that. Not at home games, never at away games. But yes, they’ve had a big problem over the years, a lot of players went through madness if you ask me. They still have a big problem, it keeps going on. Some in Italy say that they are just ignorant, they are not really racist, just ignorant. If one guy starts to shout, then more people will do it. I have heard that they are more ignorant that racist. But still, one time is one time too many.
Eddy Gnahoré, in previous discussions you’ve had with local press, comes up as a big reason for why you did move to Amiens. He’s moved on to FC Wuhan Zall, which caught a lot of headlines globally, because of the timing amid the COVID-19 outbreak. Did he want to make this move?
Yeah, since that move went through, I guess that he wanted to leave. He was in a bit of a tough period in Amiens at that time, left out of the squad for four or five games. It was first of all, everything started in January I think. He was linked to some other German clubs and I think he wanted to leave but didn’t leave. Then he got a late offer from a Russian club to go there on loan and he didn’t feel that this would be a good move for him. When this China move came on, I think he was thinking for 24 hours about what to do and then he just felt like, this is the right move for me.
It is a loan with an option to buy, which means he gets to test it out, which is good, Chinese clubs don’t tend to loan players from Europe. Did it take you by surprise?
Yeah, to be honest I don’t think that anyone saw that one coming. But at the end of the day, Eddy was happy, so I am happy for him.
Obviously the extraordinary situation with COVID-19 is such that he might get to play competitive football before you guys again.
Yeah, I mean, they faced the corona situation already in December, so we are talking about 4 or 5 months ago, and we took it seriously just a couple of weeks ago. It might take a month or two at least here in Europe. I don’t know to be honest. That’s how it is, things are getting stable in China right now. All the teams that were here in Europe (for pre-season training), left China in February and went to training camp in places like Marbella, La Manga and stuff, some went to Dubai. After the outbreak, all the teams just left Europe. They were like it is safer in China than Europe.
Moving on to another one of your colleagues, we want to get a sense of how Saman Ghoddos coped with the 4 month FIFA suspension from playing competitive football, which ran in the first half of this season, owing to a prior transfer dispute involving Huesca. That must be mentally really tricky: watching your teammates week in, week out, but you just have to sit there.
To be honest, he was really, really strong mentally. When he had faced that situation, when they told him: “You are banned for 4 months.” Even the club told him: “If you need a week off, or two weeks off, just now to clear your mind and maybe go visit your family or take a trip somewhere.” He was like: “No. I want to stay and I have got 4 months to work hard and to come back stronger.” So yeah, he stayed here and was part of every single session – that shows character to me. Then obviously when he came back he picked up a small injury on his thigh, absolutely strong mentally.
Are you quite goal-oriented as a person? Or are you someone who likes to live more in the moment, taking every day as it comes? When this season began, did you have very specific goals on what you wanted to achieve; whether that was number of minutes, certain standards from statistical perspective? Or was it more you joined a new team and you just wanted to take the first 6 months day by day.
I have been told that French football is strange and that you just have to get used to it and don’t focus that much on the tactical stuff. So in the beginning, it was a bit strange for me and people told me that people use 6 months to a year to get used to the football here and that then you have from November to end of February where it is difficult because the pitches are starting to get bad and it is windy and rainy, this and that, just so you know. I was like yeah alright I guess it is everywhere, because it was the same in Italy.
For me, it was about coming to the club, getting to know it, the coach and his ideas, get to know the league obviously. And then just try to enjoy football, because I didn’t do that for 2.5 years at Palermo. So, yeah, obviously I am that kind of guy who prepares. I am taking care of my body, working a lot. I am not the kind of guy who takes one day at a time. I want to try to achieve something. The club told us that our goal this year was just to stay in Ligue 1, that’s our goal. That’s what we are working for.
Discipline is something that we’ve already discussed a lot today. There are some players who are struggling at the moment for motivation, the idea that you have to get up, run around bits of your garden and then go to bed and repeat, go to bed and repeat. There’s no variation, and it gets boring.
My father told me something once: “When things get boring, or you’ve been doing it a lot and it is not like fun anymore. Just remember why you started. And that’s how you are going to find the strength to keep on going, doing the same thing, if that is what you have to do.”
I have had some tough days here mentally too, because I am here all alone, my wife is back home in Norway and I told her to stay there to be with her family, to take care of her mother. So I am going to be fine here, but still me too I find it boring, just doing squats and planks and push-ups and sit-ups, split squats and all this all alone, but we have to do it. Even though, if we do it a lot everyday and we go out running in the garden, even though that might not be enough to stay fit to come back and play 90 minutes, imagine if you do nothing! Then you would need a proper pre-season, have pain in your groins, pain in your back. So rather maintain something and maybe have 10 days that will be tough when we return and then step-by-step get back to shape.
How do you cope with the pressures that come with being a modern day full-back. You are now expected, especially in France, to be making lung-busting runs up and down the field for 90 minutes. Secondly, would you say the game is more physically demanding on players of your position than when you first turned professional.
For the first one, personally, I am like a modern full-back, I want to attack a lot. With that being said, you need to have the ball a lot as well, and we have had many games where we succeeded with that, and some games also where we struggled with that.
The games that you have the ball a lot, you get to attack a lot, make some crosses, be really part of the offensive game. Some games, I’ve found it difficult. That’s football. I have to just tell myself, first of all you are a defender, and the attacking part comes after that. I want to be part of every single attack if it is possible.
It is demanding when it comes to the physical aspect. I believe that you’ve got to be realistic if you want to attack and defend at the same time, we are not machines, we don’t run on battery, but we can do something and that’s training hard. We have fitness coaches who will give you all the extra training you need to become that fit.
The last 10 years has been about rinsing every ounce of energy out of a player in 90 minutes, being super efficient in your energy usage. Do you think we are going to get to a point where we start to endanger player’s bodies by pushing so close to that red zone the entire time?
It might be, at the end of the day, I also believe that the body adapts. If you put a lot of sprints and training on your body, I think, let me use Liverpool as an example. The first year that Klopp came, he was struggling with a lot of injured players, and if you see them now, they just seem to be machines that never get tired. And I believe that all the hard work they did and the intensity they put in training and games has paid off in the last two years. It is almost the same XI that is playing every three years, with the same intensity.
Liverpool is an interesting example – arguably no team that successful has worked that hard from a fitness perspective certainly in the modern era in club football. As you say, right now their bodies are able to maintain it. The question is going to be what do the next two, three, four years look like – will there be wear and tear type injuries.
At the end of the day, let’s see what happens in two or three years, whether they keep the same intensity. Like I told you, at the end of the day we are not machines, it is not like we can just be repaired in one day and keep going. So, I believe with time you can hurt your body, absolutely.
Imagine this scenario – it’s the 6th minute, you’ve got towards the byline, and the first cross you attempt in the match goes wayward. That is something that every attacking full-back in your position has experienced. Have you had to develop a specific mental capacity to ignore that scenario from affecting you?
The only technique that I use to keep myself in the game. I’ll say: “Ok, I missed a cross or two. So the next time, before I make a cross, I always look at the striker to see where he is. If I miss a cross or two, I will make sure that the next one, I am just going to make sure that it is really hard and seeking for the striker.” It can be hard and low, or just like, the moment I hit the ball, I am just going to make sure it is really hard and I am going to make it difficult for the defender to defend it well. And that might be hard and low. But you know when you get hard crosses against you and it comes in really fast, that’s always hard to defend against. That’s what I try to do. Couple times I’ve succeeded with that, couple of times I have sent it even longer than the crosses before (laughs).
To be honest, I don’t really mind missing crosses, especially in this period that we’ve been through. The pitches are bad sometimes, so right before a cross the ball might bounce up 5cm and then you send the ball all the way for a throw-in. That’s happened to me maybe three or four times in a month. At this level, when you play for a top five league, you’ve just got to be in mentally. If you’re there, I believe you are still going to deliver a really good performance, even if you don’t touch the ball, just by defending and talking and leading from behind.
If you put three good crosses in, it gives you confidence and stuff, but you’ve still got to keep to the basics, not try to do something different. And yeah, me personally, if I miss three crosses, I know I’ve done it, I try to put dangerous balls in, rather than trying to chip it to the striker on the back post.
Is it a personal goal of yours to rack up more assists than you are currently doing?
Not really, this year, I think I have two assists and one goal, which is nothing to be honest. I feel like I could have at least 5 assists this year, I had some crosses where some players should have scored. I won’t name them, but if you see the crosses you’ll be like: “Oh, you owe me an assist there, you owe me an assist here.” But this is football and that’s what happens, which is why as a defender I don’t focus on those numbers, even though it is fun to score and have an assist. I appreciate keeping clean sheets and be an attacking full-back.
Who is a teammate who you have come across in your career with the strangest pre-match ritual and what was that ritual?
In Italy, without mentioning names, I saw some strange things. Like, first of all, there were a lot of people who used to smoke cigarettes. And, when I say a lot of people, I mean players. It’s really common and that was strange for me, I remember when I came on my first day, to Palermo. I went to the hotel where all the players were and they were about to play against Marseille in a friendly game. So I went there and had lunch with them and then I just saw 7 or 8 players go out on the balcony outside the restaurant with all the coaches just sitting there and smoking cigarettes. I just went to Oscar Hiljemark, I said to him are these physios or coaches and he said: “Ah, no. Welcome to Italy, you will get used to it.”
So what happened, before games, it was like, we had the showers and bathrooms together, so always five minutes before I went out onto the pitch, I went to take a piss and it was always the same guys before a game standing there smoking cigarettes, because they just needed it. Even in the break, the coach would give us 5 minutes, and you would see one or two guys just sprinting in just to have some puffs of the cigarettes and I was like oh my gosh this is crazy. You would never be able to do that in a country like Norway or England or in Spain. I don’t know if it was some addiction, or they just had to do it before the games.
Is there a top ambition that you have in mind at the moment?
Absolutely, with the national team we were due to play in the Euro play-offs against Serbia, and that’s something I absolutely want to achieve. Play the Euros. So, yeah. We have a good team, a really nice group. We have a lot of talent, a lot of good players, we have Sander Berge, who is now at Sheffield United. He is a really good midfielder. We have Martin Odegaard, he’s had a brilliant season so far for Real Sociedad and obviously the striker Haaland. Also a top player. In the meantime, they are top guys as well, humble, a really nice group. We have Joshua King, very good striker. A lot of good players. I believe we have a good chance to get to go to the Euros.
What is Haaland like? He is getting a fair amount of stick in the French press for his meditation celebration in the Champions’ League…
Yeah, but that wasn’t the first time. He did it even when he played for Red Bull Salzburg. He is a young guy, but he is just a chill guy who loves to play football. One thing is to be calm and he is really calm, he is a young guy with confidence. He is humble as f***, but at the end of the day, he is hungry. Yeah he goes with the flow, as you say everything seems to be going perfectly for him, he is banging in goals and stuff, but when he’s on the pitch, you can see the hunger in his face. So, no matter the success, and it is the same with Berge and Odegaard, they’re hungry and in the meantime they’re humble.
Even if they are doing really well, or getting a lot of goals. Straight after the game, boom, they switch off, and just keep going on. With the same intensity and focus. Really good mentality. But Haaland for now is just a young guy who is enjoying and working really, really hard. You can even see it on his face in training and in games with the national team. And obviously, he’s a talented guy, great finisher, strong, fast. He’s kind of got everything, some players maybe have speed, but not that good a finish. But for now he has everything and I think with the years to come, he will just give us more.
And any final thoughts on your side.
Personally, I just want to see how far I can make it club wise. I really want to play in England one day. Just to see how the football… I grew up watching English football, that is the football we follow in Norway, so that’s absolutely a dream. To be honest, after watching Pep Guardiola and his tikitaka in Spain, it would be fun to try that too.
The difference in England (compared to France) is the stadiums, obviously when you play PSG, you are in front of a full stadium, which is cool, but in England you have so many teams. It is just so different. That will be a dream.
If Amiens do get relegated, would you be happy to stay?
I have already heard from some guys working for the club, their biggest fear is that if we get relegated, that it won’t be easy to get back to Ligue 1 because, he had a bad feeling of a lot of players were going to leave. He meant more than 4 or 5 players. To be honest, I don’t know what the club’s plan is, if they even have a plan for if we go to Ligue 2.
But for now as a player, I can’t even talk about Ligue 2, what’s going to happen. It would sound like I have already given up. For now, we have got 10 games left and we have 30 points to play for. It is still a massive chance to stay in Ligue 1, we are still going to meet some of the teams that are just right above us. So it will be interesting to see, we’ve been a bit unlucky with some of the results. We’ve got to keep working and believing. If we stop believing now, then we should just go on vacation, I am not that kind of player.
