<a class="postlink" href="http://www.theguardian.com/football/2015/may/01/eliaquim-mangala-manchester-city" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;">http://www.theguardian.com/football/201 ... ester-city</a>
His story begins among the apartment blocks of Sartrouville, a north-west suburb of Paris, and as Eliaquim Mangala opens up about the events that shaped his life it quickly becomes apparent this was no ordinary childhood.
“My brother, Daniel, was seven,” Mangala says. “He loved playing football. Like a lot of kids of that age in France, living in apartment blocks, they would play football in the area below. Then one day, just a normal day, he and his friends were playing and the ball went out of play and ran down a slope into the car park. There isn’t a lot of space in Paris so a lot of the car parks in these districts are underground. It was his turn to go down to fetch it and as he was coming back out, that’s when it happened. The automatic door came down. He couldn’t get out in time. It caught him here.”
He is pointing to the back of his neck. “His brain was starved of oxygen for quite some time. I don’t know if it came down on him more than once or trapped him. But his brain couldn’t get any oxygen. He was paralysed from that moment on. It was just a tragic accident.”
It was because of Daniel’s condition, needing round-the-clock care, that the family left Paris in 1996 to move across the border into Namur. “There were specialist-care centres in Belgium that had the facilities he needed,” Mangala explains. “My brother could have been a footballer himself, it could have been his career, but now he can’t walk and he can’t speak. He and my mother [Madeleine] are still in Belgium. He spends some time at home and some at the care centre and every Christmas we always spend it all together.
“He plays a huge role in my life. I always wanted to become a footballer but I did this for my brother as well. He could have been a player himself but for this accident and he is still a source of inspiration for me, mental inspiration. He gives me strength, psychologically, and when I am out there on the field I feel like I am doing it for him. My mother, too. She might be proud of what I have achieved but look at what she has achieved, bringing up two kids – one of them a disabled child – on her own. A lot of what I do now is to make sure she is looked after well.”
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Mangala was five when they moved to Namur and growing up there was a time when the Belgium football association wanted him to switch allegiances from France. His junior career started with Athletic Club Lustin. Then he signed for CS Wépionnais in Wépion and Union Royale Namur. The teenage Mangala was nothing like the powerhouse we see at Manchester City now. “I was very skinny,” he says, holding up his finger for effect. “Very, very skinny. I didn’t fill out until I was 21 but I was fast and good in the air and I started as a striker. Technically I wasn’t as good as some of the other players but because of my height if you put the ball in the air I scored a lot of goals.”
It was when Standard Liège recruited him that the move to defence followed. “It was obvious I wasn’t going to be good enough technically to play in attack so I knew I had to move to a position that would suit my size and strength. From 16 I started to play as a holding midfielder. Marouane Fellaini had just left and that left a hole for me, a reserve in the under-17s. It was only when I was 18, my second year as a pro, that I actually started playing as a central defender.”
Mangala’s rise from that point took him to Porto and made him the most coveted central defender in the world before his transfer to City last August, at a cost of £42m. Yet it doesn’t need long in his company, speaking via a translator, to realise he is not going to pretend it has been a seamless introduction. “When you go to a club for a big fee you are always aware that the fans expect a lot. I understand that and I understand the reaction if I have received criticism in some quarters. I also have to be brutally honest with myself and say I have not been totally happy with my season.
“I don’t want to make excuses in any way but one thing that has affected me this season is that I arrived so late. It was 13 August when I had my first day of pre-season training and there is a parallel to be drawn with my first season in Portugal. I arrived there in mid-August as well and I wasn’t right. I couldn’t get properly fit. I played only half the games, 15 matches all season, and it got so bad that in the January window I wanted to go out on loan and play more regularly.
“People around me said ‘No, no, you’re in a new league, a different country, you’ve got to get used to it and it will come right’ and in the second season it did come right. I played 40 games and I played very well. I am self-critical, though, and I know there is no choice for me here but to improve. When you are a big-money signing, that’s it – you are obliged to perform well. I’ve had some games where I have been OK, some average and some not so good. If you look at the statistics, they will show it has not been that bad, but I know myself that I must do better. I have lacked consistency.”
Patrice Evra had a similar experience when he came to England, describing his debut in a Manchester derby as being so fast and furious it felt like he was “playing in a washing machine”. Martín Demichelis, probably City’s best defender this season, is another example. Nemnaja Vidic, too. Mangala is far from alone.
“I’ve had a chance to look around now. I’ve been able to study all the teams and it’s a big difference to the Portuguese league. In Portugal, in 95% of the games you almost expect to win. In England it’s a lot more competitive, there are more long balls and a lot more emphasis on the second ball. Everything is hard-fought and in Portugal you wouldn’t get that intensity. You would get the ball at the back and have all the time in the world. You could look up, start an attack, pass it around, whereas in England someone is on you all the time.” His hardest opponent? “Kun Agüero, in training. If it’s his day …”
He comes across well – mature, thoughtful with his answers, in keeping with all the reports from Portugal and Belgium about his professionalism and dedication to the sport. Mangala certainly expects better times ahead. “We [City] have to be honest and say it has been a difficult season for the club. What I’ve noticed in this country is that things move so quickly. A couple of weeks ago, we were fourth and it was ‘the end of the world, we had to change everything and it had been a disastrous season’. Now, here we are again, in second. People judge very quickly in this country whereas I would rather take stock at the end of the season.
“We can’t hide, though. We realise we have fallen short of our overall objective and we have to hold up our hands and say there are games we should have won and things we can do better. Our manager says to us in his pre-match talks: ‘Make sure you don’t give away silly fouls, no stupid free-kicks around the penalty area because the other team might have stronger, taller players.’ Our strength is in our technique and quite a few of our players are smaller than the opponents. We conceded from a free-kick and a corner [against Aston Villa] last weekend, for example, and we lost like that at Burnley. We can’t hide that it has not been the season we would have liked and next year we have to do much better. We are all very aware of that.”
