Olivier Giroud

Olivier Giroud
Olivier Giroud (2018)
Personnel
Surname	Olivier Jonathan Giroud
birthday	September 30, 1986
place of birth	Chambéry ,  France
size	192 cm
position	Center Forward
Juniors
Years	station
	OCF Froges
	Grenoble Foot
Men's
Years	station	Games (goals) 1
2005-2008	Grenoble Foot	23 0(6)
2007-2008	→  FC Istres  (loan)	34 (14)
2008-2010	FC Tours	61 (30)
2010–2012	HSC Montpellier	73 (33)
2012-2018	Arsenal FC	180 (73)
2018–	Chelsea FC	59 (14)
National team
Years	selection	Games (goals) 2
2011–	France	97 (39)
1 Only league games are given. As of July 26, 2020 2 As of November 17, 2019

Olivier Jonathan Giroud (born September 30, 1986 in Chambéry ) is a French football player who has played for Chelsea in the English Premier League since January 2018 .

Career

In his clubs

The tall striker , considered a late developer, grew up in a wealthy family. His older brother also played football and was a member of the AJ Auxerre youth center . The first football club in Olivier's childhood was OCF Froges , a few kilometers north of Grenoble . In 2001 he won the Coupe des Régions with the U-16 regional team of the Rhône-Alpes and also scored a goal in the final. In the adult sector, his career began in 2005 with second division Grenoble Foot , where he had already been trained as a teenager. After he only made 23 appearances in two years and his coach Mehmed Baždarević predicted that he would not have a first division level and that it would be difficult even in the second division, he moved to the third division in 2007 on loan to FC Istres which he was able to confirm for the first time with 14 goals this season. In 2008 he signed with FC Tours and thus returned to the second division. There the attacker made the breakthrough; in the 2009/10 season he was the top scorer in Ligue 2 with 21 goals and at the end of 2009 France Football named him the best player in the league. From his coach Daniel Sanchez there , who used to be a dangerous attacker himself, he learned a lot about behavior in the center of the storm.

He then received an offer from Celtic Glasgow and was ready to accept it, but Louis Nicollin , the president of the first division club HSC Montpellier , convinced him with the words “Are you going to get bored of playing Kilmarnoche [sic!] ? You'd better come to us, you'll have more to laugh about. ”From staying in France. In Montpellier Giroud immediately developed into a regular player and top performer (twelve goals in his first season ). Twelve months later , he had 21 goals, making him the most successful goalscorer in Ligue 1 . In the same year he also won the French championship title with Montpellier .

For the 2012/13 season , Arsenal FC signed Giroud. He made his debut for Arsenal on Matchday 1 when he came on for Lukas Podolski against Sunderland . Six weeks later he scored his first goal for his new employer with the 1-1 equalizer in the city derby against West Ham United and also gave Theo Walcott the template for the 2-1 lead . In the summer of 2017 he got a French competitor in Alexandre Lacazette in his position as a striker; Giroud was ready to take up this challenge. But when Arsenal signed another attacker Pierre-Emerick Aubameyang at the end of January 2018 , he moved to local rivals Chelsea . The "coupling deal" of the Aubameyang transfer favored by Arsenal and Borussia Dortmund , according to which Giroud should have been loaned to Dortmund, rejected the latter despite a statement of his own first-class financial offer due to the short contract period and the fact that he and his family were in England feel very comfortable, from. The blues heralded him as being "fatal with his head and surgical with his feet". The contract has now been extended to 2020. At the end of May 2019 he won the Europa League final against his ex-club with the Londoners ; In this competition he was also top scorer with eleven goals - one of them in the final - in 14 appearances. During the changeover period (January 2020), however, there were increasing signs that Giroud was leaving Stamford Bridge prematurely; There were already concrete negotiations with Inter Milan before manager Frank Lampard drew a line and categorically ruled out an early termination of the contract. And since the storm leader continued to score important goals for the Blues at the beginning of 2020 before the league was interrupted due to the coronavirus pandemic - against Tottenham Hotspur and, in the FA Cup , Liverpool FC  - the club drew the option of a contract extension until summer 2021 , although he also signed two new, younger attackers, Hakim Ziyech and Timo Werner . Lampard justified this with the words “Since I've been back at Chelsea, Olivier has been brilliant as a professional and as a person. He helps the team both on and off the field ”.

Giroud is left-footed by nature, but has also scored a number of his goals with the right. For his body length he is considered to be technically above average; In addition, he won 71% of his header duels in the 2011/12 season - the vast majority of them in midfield when accepting or forwarding long passes from his own defense - while he preferred to play the ball with his feet near the opponent's goal ( 2011/12 only one point game hit per head). At the end of 2017, France Football analyzed its strengths and weaknesses in comparison with Lacazette, who was five years his junior. In addition to his scoring qualities, he is particularly characterized by the fact that he can occupy and tire an opposing defense for over 90 minutes due to his physical presence (1.93 m, 92 kg), in the penalty area an almost blind knowledge of the paths of his teammates - and the technical ones Ability to use them - as well as his willingness to regularly help out defensively when the opponent's balls are stationary near his own goal.

Robert Pires , who met him at Arsenal , explained that Giroud had fewer and fewer hours of play at Chelsea during 2019, but is almost indispensable for the national team :

“It withstands all storms, even a 5 hurricane, [because] it is firmly rooted in the ground. He knows his strengths and weaknesses and has no problem with not being appreciated by everyone. ... He plays powerfully and efficiently, has his goals firmly in view, [and even if he is criticized], he accepts this, but always with a fine smile. "

Coach Guy Stéphan justifies this attitude by stating that the striker is growing in criticism because he “has always had to fight. It's part of his story. Who would have believed in such a career in 2010? "

In May 2012 Giroud posed for the cover of the homophile magazine Têtu and justified this with the fact that he wanted to "help ... to change something in the way of seeing things and in the mentalities". He is married and has two children.

In the national team

As a B-youth, Olivier Giroud took part in several screening courses for the national year selection, but was not considered. At the beginning of November 2011, Giroud was nominated for the first time by national coach Laurent Blanc for the senior national team of France and also came on as a substitute in the two games against the USA and Belgium . He scored his first goal in the national dress on February 29, 2012 in a 2-1 win against Germany in Bremen . Blanc called the attacker, who is also a disinterested goal setter, in the 2012 French European Championship squad and replaced him there in three of France's four games. Giroud, whose team was eliminated in the quarter-finals against the defending champions and later European champions Spain , failed to score.

Under Blanc's successor Didier Deschamps , the attacker was repeatedly nominated in the fall of 2013 instead of Karim Benzema as the striker in the starting XI; he promptly scored three goals for the Bleus in the two matches in October . In May 2014, Deschamps appointed him to the French squad for the World Cup finals in Brazil , where he played in all five of the French games, but three times only as a substitute. In 2016 he was also in the French squad for the European Championship in his own country ; in the opening game of the tournament he scored France's first goal in a 2-1 win over Romania . His three goals plus two assists at this European Championship earned him the UEFA bronze shoe award . Giroud was also in Deschamps' squad at the 2018 World Cup , was used in all French games and won the world title with France. Although he didn't score at this tournament, the national coach emphasized the importance of the attacker during and after the competition: “He has a different understanding of the game. He opens the space for others to score goals. When he's not there, you realize how useful he is. ” And after the first European Championship qualifiers in March 2019, in which Giroud was also a goalscorer, France Football declared him one of the big winners in the blue Trikot who "once again silenced his critics". The journal also pointed out that among his six goals in nine of these encounters, three were decisive goals against Iceland, the Turks and Moldova. Of course, this did not prevent Karim Benzema, whom Deschamps has not taken into account since 2015, from explaining via Instagram in March 2020 what he thinks of his successor: although he acknowledges that Giroud " [is] of a certain benefit because he is not afraid to work in the coal cellar ” . But he asked himself whether the audience loved this style of play; and in any case, the comparison between Giroud and him is like comparing “ Formula 1 with a go-kart ” , to be sure to add “I know that I am Formula 1” .

In total, Giroud has played 97 full international matches so far, scoring 39 goals, making him the third most successful goalscorer in French international history. (As of November 17, 2019)

Palmarès

Giroud with the World Cup trophy (2018)

society

• French champion : 2012
• FA Cup : 2014 , 2015 , 2017 , 2018
• FA Community Shield : 2014 , 2015 , 2017
• Europa League : 2019

National team

• World Champion : 2018

Awards

• Most successful goalscorer in Ligue 1: 2011/12
• Winner of the bronze shoe at the 2016 European Football Championship
• FIFA Puskás Prize : 2017
• Top scorer in the UEFA Europa League: 2018/19

Web links

Commons : Olivier Giroud  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

• Giroud's data sheet on the website of the French Football Association
• Olivier Giroud , profile on lfp.fr (French)
• Olivier Giroud , profile on francefootball.fr (French)
• Olivier Giroud in the database of soccerbase.com (English)

Notes and evidence

• Article “Giroud - Au-delà du miroir” in France Football of November 7, 2011

1. ↑ Décret du 31 December 2018 portant promotion et nomination , legifrance.gouv.fr, accessed on February 13, 2019 (French)
2. ↑ “Au-delà du miroir”, p. 5f.
3. ↑ ^{a b} Interview with Olivier Giroud in France Football of March 28, 2017, pp. 22–27, here p. 24
4. ↑ Article "Les Bleus au tout debut" in France Football of May 31, 2016, p. 34
5. ↑ ^{a b} “Au-delà du miroir”, p. 8
6. ^ “Au-delà du miroir”, p. 6
7. ↑ Olivier Giroud agrees deal to join Arsenal ( Memento of the original from September 2, 2012 on WebCite ) 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. 
8. ↑ Interview “Je voulais redevenir heureux” in France Football from February 20, 2018, pp. 36–41, here in particular pp. 37/38
9. ↑ Quotation from " Giroud signs with Chelsea " from January 31, 2018 at chelseafc.com
10. ↑ Chelsea FC (Ed.): Olivier Giroud signs contract extension with Chelsea . In: Chelsea FC (website of the English club). May 21, 2019, accessed on May 21, 2019 . 
11. ↑ List of goalscorers for the 2018/19 Europa League season at uefa.com
12. ↑ Article " A lost exchange period and a national team in danger - or not " from January 31, 2020 at francefootball.fr
13. ↑ Article “ Giroud: Contract option drawn ” from May 20, 2020 at chelseafc.com
14. ↑ see the detailed statistics in the article "Giroud, Monsieur Plus" in France Football of May 22, 2012, pp. 14/15
15. ↑ Article “ What Giroud and Lacazette can each be of use to the national team ” from November 13, 2017 at francefootball.fr
16. ↑ ^{a b} Article " Olivier Giroud, the unsinkable " from November 13, 2019 at francefootball.fr
17. ↑ Der Spiegel of May 26, 2012, p. 148; the announcement of the June 2012 issue ( memento of the original from June 17, 2012 in the Internet Archive ) 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. on the tetu.com page 
18. ↑ Interview with Olivier Giroud in France Football of March 28, 2017, pp. 22–27, here p. 27
19. ^ "Au-delà du miroir", p. 10
20. ↑ Article " Didier Deschamps before France against the Netherlands " from September 8, 2018 at francefootball.fr
21. ↑ " Winners and losers of the French team " from March 26, 2019 at francefootball.fr
22. ↑ " The scores for France against Moldova " from November 15, 2019 at francefootball.fr
23. ↑ Article “ Karim Benzema on Olivier Giroud ” from March 29, 2020 at lequipe.fr
24. ↑ http://www.goal.com/de/mektiven/x-gewinnt-fifa-puskas-award-fuer-schoenstes-tor-des-jahres/1fgei8ru9v30o1abzrjyyr8tba