AS many of the 47,635 spectators who watched his Newcastle United debut will be able to testify, you tend not to forget the first time you saw Allan Saint-Maximin play.
The 22-year-old forward made only a 23-minute cameo against Arsenal on the Premier League season’s opening weekend, but his darting runs, effervescent dribbling and all-action style helped to take some of the edge off a 1-0 defeat. He has been keeping Newcastle’s fans on the edges of their seats ever since.
Dominique Fernandez was just as bowled over the first time he saw Saint-Maximin play. Then working as a youth scout for Le Havre, Fernandez first came across Saint-Maximin when he was playing in an Under-13s tournament in the Parisian suburb of Meudon. The youngster was only 10 years old, a full two years younger than most of his team-mates and opponents, but the way he played football was electrifying.
It's not getting any easier for Almiron is it?!
I like the lad, but maybe it's time for him to be taken out of the firing line and perhaps have a go at two up front to give Joelinton a bit of support?
Saint-Maximin a joy to watch though!!
Thoughts?#nufc pic.twitter.com/eaWCf85T14
— NUFC.org (@NUFC_org) November 28, 2019
“I’d never seen a player like that in 20 years of my career,” Fernandez told Saint-Étienne fan website Poteaux Carrés. “He was all percussion, speed, dribbling and risk-taking. He never stopped running and on top of that he exuded joie de vivre and will to win.” Fernandez would later play an important role in bringing Saint-Maximin to Saint-Étienne, his first professional club.
Prior to that, the youngster moved to another team in the Parisian suburbs, AC Boulogne-Billancourt, and once again, he would make a memorable first impression. “One Saturday, he was brought to me and I was told, ‘You’ll see, he’s very good. Play him,’” recalled former Boulogne-Billancourt coach Guillaume Sabatier. “In the first game, when I didn’t know him at all, he scored eight goals.”
According to the player own’s account, his former Nice coach Lucien Favre also had trouble believing his own eyes after Saint-Maximin arrived from Monaco in a club-record €10 million transfer in the summer of 2017. “The first time the coach saw me dribble in training, he said to himself: ‘Who is this player?’” Saint-Maximin told French TV channel SFR Sport in February 2018. “‘This isn’t possible. Is this a football player or someone from the circus?’”
From his blond dreadlocks and trademark Gucci headband down to his rapidly whirring legs, Saint-Maximin has never had any trouble catching the eye. But when those around him begin to form their second, third, fourth and fifth impressions, the verdicts tend to become more nuanced. If the style has always been there for all to see, the substance has seldom been as easy to discern.
Saint-Maximin’s experience with Favre was a case in point. The Swiss coach might have been dazzled by the winger initially, but within weeks his patience was wearing thin. After a 2-0 play-off defeat by Napoli in August 2017 ended Nice’s hopes of Champions League participation, Favre took umbrage at a journalist’s suggestion that Saint-Maximin had been his side’s most dangerous attacking player.
“It’s easy to run with the ball,” Favre said. “But then you need to combine with your team-mates. He has huge qualities, but he has a huge amount of work to do as well. It will take time – believe me.” Favre’s successor, Patrick Vieira, also struggled with Saint-Maximin. The forward started 34 games for Nice in Ligue 1 last season, but despite one of the stingiest defences in the division theoretically giving him a solid platform on which to perform, he finished the campaign with only six goals and three assists to his name.
Highest xG without a goal:
David McGoldrick: 3.80
Che Adams: 2.57
Miguel Almiron: 2.38
Felipe Anderson: 1.83
Dominic Solanke: 1.56
Theo Walcott: 1.47
Allan Saint-Maximin: 1.46
Harry Maguire: 1.39
Jeffrey Sclupp: 1.37
Pedro: 1.23— Chris Bland (@blandc_1996) November 28, 2019
Vieira effectively accused Saint-Maximin of fabricating an illness after he missed a 3-0 loss at Angers in February – a charge that the player rejected – and with the season drawing to a close, the former Arsenal midfielder gave full vent to his frustrations. “The problem with Allan is that unfortunately he thinks his talent is enough to reach the very top level,” Vieira told Canal+ in April. “And he should understand that he needs to work and to make sacrifices. He needs to suffer. And unfortunately, he hasn’t yet understood.”
Saint-Maximin’s reluctance to put a shift in did not go unnoticed in the Nice changing room. During an appearance on SFR Sport last year, left-back Maxime Le Marchand – now of Fulham – revealed that when he asked Saint-Maximin to track the opposition right-back during a league game against Nantes, his team-mate reacted by fleeing to the opposite flank.
Away from the pitch, Saint-Maximin’s behaviour has often contributed to the image of a player not 100 percent focused on his professional obligations. Following Nice’s home defeat by struggling Caen last April, for example, he posted a picture of himself on Snapchat at a Monaco nightclub at five o’clock in the morning. Extra-curricular scrapes have been a recurring theme in his career and it is telling that Mario Balotelli, who played with him at Nice for 18 months, considered him a kindred spirit.
Saint-Maximin’s performances in his fledgling Newcastle career serve as a convenient metaphor for his career to date. Across Europe’s five major leagues, only Neymar, Lionel Messi, Wilfried Zaha, Eden Hazard and former Nice team-mate Youcef Atal average more successful dribbles per game, but in 573 minutes of league football, he has produced no goals and only a single assist.
Nevertheless, Newcastle’s fans have taken him to their hearts, in a manner that recalls the love they once showed to Hatem Ben Arfa, another lavishly talented but maddeningly inconsistent French forward from the Paris suburbs. Ben Arfa famously fell foul of Steve Bruce during a brief, unhappy stint at Hull City, but for now the Newcastle manager seems content to indulge Saint-Maximin’s more wayward tendencies, talking up his ability to provide “something different” on the pitch and hailing his “daft, off-the-wall” personality.
If Bruce can succeed in unlocking Saint-Maximin’s remarkable potential, those golden first impressions might, for once, prove to be just the beginning.
