Julien Le Cardinal may not be a player who impresses at first glance, but he certainly does at second. The 27-year-old literally went from dishwasher to well-paid professional footballer.
Stade Brest is undoubtedly one of the big surprises in the current Champions League season. Two matchdays before the end of the group stage, the French team is in seventh place and still has a good chance of qualifying directly for the round of 16. An important piece of the puzzle in Eric Roy’s team is Julien Le Cardinal – a man with an unusual career.
Le Cardinal did not play his first professional game until he was 24 years old, before that he made a living as a dishwasher, pizza baker and forklift driver. “They were difficult times,” the defender looked back in an interview with SoFoot and revealed that he once played as an amateur at Stade Saint-Brieuc for 150 euros a month. “At one point, I stopped playing football because I wanted to work. If you don’t have a job, you don’t have any money.“ And that turns out to be a problem ‘when you turn 18 or 19, especially since I was never good at school.’
”Everyone fought for themselves”
As a youngster, Le Cardinal was at EA Guingamp for a while, but he couldn’t stay there for long. “That episode took me away from football a little,” says the 27-year-old looking back, admitting that he didn’t like the “whole world of professional football” at the time, “the mentality, the behaviour – everything was different. Everyone fought for themselves and I didn’t fit in, I was isolated. When I got injured, nobody came to pick me up from school to take me to training. That’s when my dream was over. It took me a long time to get over that.”
His path in life then led him more and more away from football in his late teens. “I stacked pallets, then I worked for the railways, I was a pizza baker and a forklift truck driver – all between the ages of 17 and 18,” explained Le Cardinal, revealing that his job at the restaurant chain “Del Arte” has changed his life dramatically.
He started there as a dishwasher and worked his way up to assistant cook – but it was also where he met the love of his life. “I had relationships before, but they were all bad,” said Le Cardinal, who revealed that his current wife once told him that he should either ‘get off his ass, get back to football and start living a normal life’ or he would end up ‘all alone’.
And he turned back to football. Although Le Cardinal still had to work. As a forklift driver, he had a special deal. “I got up at 6:30 and drove to work. Then I ate something at 11 and went to training before I came back and worked again until 5 or 6 pm.”
Step out of your comfort zone and into risk
A professional career was still a long way off back then. “We played for promotion to the 3rd division,” Le Cardinal recalls. It was at that time that coach Stephane Rossi, who was also playing in the fourth division with Bastia, took notice of him and negotiations for a transfer took place.
“It was a club I had seen on TV, and it had a professional infrastructure. So one day I said to my wife: Pack your swimsuit, we’re going to Bastia. She had considered it at first, but she stuck with me. I couldn’t let the chance pass, I had to get out of my comfort zone and take a risk.”
Get out of Paris
He stayed in Bastia for three years, promoted the club to the third and then to the second French division – he still follows the club today. In 2021, Le Cardinal played his first game as a professional for Bastia in Ligue 2. In 2022, he joined Paris FC, but only stayed there for a few months. “Paris is the worst place I’ve ever lived. Me and my wife didn’t like it at all. It took me an hour to get to training and an hour and a half to get back. There are crowds of people wherever you go. But I like my peace and quiet.”
Fortunately for him, he then moved to Lens – and encountered the big world of national team players. “You come to training and feel like a little kid,” the defender recalled, explaining that the move could only happen because he agreed to a pay cut. “Paris were asking for too much for a player of my caliber. I received a phone call telling me that the transfer would only go through if I was willing to take a pay cut. I was sad and angry, but I agreed.”
He only made ten appearances for Lens and then moved to Stade Brest. There, Le Cardinal also had a difficult start, barely getting any minutes of play, but the defensive specialist did not give up – and he fought for his place. And now Le Cardinal has fulfilled “the ultimate childhood dream” by winning the Champions League. He has also learned from his experiences, and says that three things are particularly important: “Never give up, a good environment and knowing that even if you achieve your goal, everything can fall apart again.”