If things had worked out as Younès Kaboul initially envisaged he might now have been in the midst of preparations for Roland Garros and Wimbledon.
Instead the tall, powerful, cultured Frenchman finds himself serving aces purely for summer holiday fun while earning a living marshalling Sunderland’s defence. Kaboul may have abandoned his childhood dream of becoming the new Yannick Noah or Henri Leconte but, right now, the pressures involved in trying to keep Sam Allardyce’s side in the Premier League are every bit as intense as anything the world’s leading tennis players will face during next month’s French Open in Paris.
The former Tottenham Hotspur centre-half – Mauricio Pochettino’s captain before decamping to Wearside last summer – agrees that, earlier this season, Sunderland swiftly found themselves “two sets down” but suggests they have rallied to the point where the relegation game has entered a fifth set.
“It’s break point,” says Kaboul, who could further endear himself to old friends at White Hart Lane by helping undo Arsenal at the Stadium of Light on Sunday. “And it’s going to stay like that until the end of the season. We won the last break at Norwich [3-0] last week; now we need the next one.”
With the 30-year-old having dislodged John O’Shea from Allardyce’s back line to form a centre-back partnership with Lamine Koné, his stellar form is a big reason why Sunderland have recovered to sit one point and one place behind 17th-placed Norwich and one point ahead of a newly renascent Newcastle United. Significantly, the Wearside team have a game in hand on their two relegation rivals and Kaboul has reason to believe he will still be a top-tier defender when he dusts down his serve-and-volley tactics this summer.
“As a kid I wanted to be a tennis player,” says Kaboul. “It was a passion; I was good and I still play when I’m on a break but it was too expensive for me to continue. I was doing tournaments but the coaching and the travel and the rackets cost too much.”
So, at the age of 13 Kaboul, whose parents emigrated before he was born from Morocco to Saint-Julien-en-Genevois, a sleepy town near France’s Alpine border with Switzerland, followed his father’s advice and switched to football. “My dad played football very well back in the day in Morocco,” he says in his immaculate, softly spoken English. “When he came to France he became a referee and had the chance to do it professionally but it was too great a risk for our family.
“My dad had very good chances to become a footballer, then a referee, but he had four kids and couldn’t afford to risk taking those opportunities so I’m very happy to be carrying that flame.”
So far his grip seems reassuringly steady. “It’s tight but everything feels better after beating Norwich,” he says. “We’ve been playing well but drawing a lot of games we could have won so it was important.”
It seems very different from the days when he was challenging for Europe with Spurs but Kaboul sees real, stress-induced parallels. “The pressure’s similar,” says a man who rejected a mooted move to Roy Keane’s Sunderland eight years ago but now has “no regrets” about heading north. “At Tottenham you’re fighting to get into the top four so you have pressure and there’s similar pressure here – to stay up. But we have experienced players and some quality so there’s hope.”
Indeed he could soon be celebrating a title/survival double on the part of his past and present clubs. “I only focus on Sunderland,” he maintains, diplomatically. “But I have a few very close friends at Tottenham so I’ll be happy for them to win the title.”
The acutely acrimonious relationship between Allardyce and Arsène Wenger may have mellowed but they will never be soulmates and Kaboul suggested that Arsenal should not expect a red carpet welcome.
“Since Sam took over from Dick [Advocaat] we straight away saw things differently because Sam is, I think, someone who knows this league better than he knows his family,” he says. “Sam knows exactly how to – how can I say it – upset other teams.
“I don’t think he needed much time to analyse us as footballers or people. He’s got so much experience that, for him, one week of training was enough to know us. To learn which way we should play and what we needed to improve. He’s made us strong and solid. He’s shown us how to stay in games and how to win.”
Doing the latter on Sunday would answer the prayers of a city. “Staying up is important for this club, of course, but it’s more important for the north-east of England,” says Kaboul, whose calm authority has seen him emerge as a key dressing-room leader. “It would mean a lot to the people here.”
For a man whose life had previously revolved around London, France and Morocco – where he is building a family patisserie business – the parochial intensity of his new habitat’s all-consuming football passion has come as a considerable, yet welcome, culture shock.
“The people here are so much behind us, their dedication to the club is amazing, it’s fantastic,” he says. “The Premier League needs teams from the north-east. We must make sure we beat Arsenal.”
