Marama Vahirua

Marama Vahirua
Personnel
birthday	May 12, 1980
place of birth	Papeete ,  Tahiti
size	172 cm
position	midfield player
Juniors
Years	station
	FC Nantes
Men's
Years	station	Games (goals) 1
1998-2004	FC Nantes	111 (28)
2004-2007	OGC Nice	99 (19)
2007-2010	FC Lorient	86 (19)
2010–2012	AS Nancy	25 0(5)
2011–2012	→  AS Monaco  (loan)	14 0(3)
2012-2013	Panthrakikos Komotini	26 0(3)
2013–	AS Pirae
National team
Years	selection	Games (goals)
2000-2001	France U-21	6 0(2)
2013	Tahiti	3 0(0)
1 Only league games are given.

Marama Vahirua (born May 12, 1980 in Papeete on Tahiti , French Polynesia ) is a French- Tahitian football player and technical director of the Tahitian football association.

Club career

The striker comes from a very football-loving family: his father Bernard coached the Oceania Cup participant Temanava from the island of Moorea in 2007 , and his cousin Pascal Vahirua - like Marama - moved from Tahiti to France as a youngster for the sake of sports training. One of his uncles is the former French Polynesian soccer player and coach Erroll Bennett , whose sons Naea Bennett and Steven Bennett are also active players.

Unlike Pascal, Marama Vahirus was drawn to the training center of FC Nantes . In April 1999, the Canaris - the common name for the West French dressed in yellow - used it for the first time in a league game. At an early age, he was also appointed to the French U-21 national team ( "Espoirs" ), which was then still coached by Raymond Domenech . He stayed with Nantes until 2004; he scored 28 in 111 Ligue 1 games and three goals in 13 UEFA Cup and Champions League matches. He was more of the type of "playing along" striker who often acted as a template provider rather than a goal scorer. Two of his goals were even decisive for FC Nantes: on May 13, 2000 he scored the winning goal against Le Havre , which saved the Canaris a relegation match against relegation. And on May 12, 2001 he scored the only goal in the encounter against AS Saint-Étienne , which secured his team the championship title, which was his only one so far.

In 2004 he moved to OGC Nice ; his first two years on the Côte d'Azur were quite successful for Mahama Vahirua, whom coach Frédéric Antonetti had retrained to become the number 10 playmaker: he scored 15 goals in 67 first division games. 2006/07, on the other hand, was rather a weak year characterized by form fluctuations and problems between player and coach. Nevertheless, he scored a decisive goal again at the end of the season, this time against Paris Saint-Germain , which finally rid Nice of all relegation worries.

In the summer of 2007 Mahama Vahirua followed the call of the Breton FC Lorient , whose coach Christian Gourcuff is the only top division coach who still practices the "jeu à la Nantaise" , the decades-long successful offensive concept of FC Nantes. Obviously, Vahirua feels more comfortable there in football and human terms than last in Nice, having already scored four goals after just four days of play in the 2007/08 season - two "doubles" at PSG and at home against defending champions Lyon  . In March 2008 he suffered a ruptured Achilles tendon that put him out of action for seven months (first league brief after that: the local derby on October 21 against the Canaris ). At FC Lorient, he developed into one of the most effective assists in the league. On the last match day of the 2009/10 season , Vahirua, who had only received two warnings in his entire professional career, was sent off for the first time - rightly, as he subsequently admitted - in stoppage time of his last encounter in the dress of the Merlus .

From July 2010 he was part of the squad of AS Nancy , which loaned him to second division AS Monaco in August 2011 , before moving to Greece a year later. A year later he decided to end his professional career, after which he played in Tahiti for AS Pirae before ending his career in 2017. He is currently the Technical Director of the Fédération Tahitienne de Football .

National team

In September 2012 he was appointed to the Tahitian national team for the first time, but was not used at the time. In early May 2013, Eddy Etaeta appointed him to the squad of the Tahitian national team for the 2013 FIFA Confederations Cup ; At the opening game of the Toa Aito - the national players are known in their homeland as the "Iron Warriors" - against Nigeria (final score 1: 6) Marama Vahirua was part of the starting line-up and provided the template for his team's consolation goal . Vahirua is also a member of the French Polynesia national beach soccer team .

successes

• French champion : 2001
• League cup finalist : 2006
• Oceania's Footballer of the Year : 2005

Web links

• Marama Vahirua in the database of weltfussball.de
• Vahirua and Tahiti: A Special Relationship (fifa.com)

Notes and evidence

1. ^ Vahirua returns to his roots. (No longer available online.) Oceania Football Confederation , Nov. 8, 2013, archived from the original on Nov. 9, 2013 ; accessed on November 9, 2013 . Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.  
2. ↑ marama-vahirua-officiel - Skyrock.com
3. ↑ Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. , accessed July 3, 2013  
4. ↑ France Football of May 18, 2010, pp. 25 and 30
5. ↑ Article “The second division doesn't scare me” in France Football
6. ↑ France Football, June 11, 2013, p. 49
7. ↑ Vahirua ends on a high - Oceania Football Confederation ( Memento of the original from November 9, 2013 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was automatically inserted and not yet checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. , accessed July 3, 2013 
8. ↑ ContiSoccerWorld -The star: Marama Vahirua - Continental