Two footballers have been the focus of my portrait lens lately. Both these midfield players arrived on the Riviera recently. One a Brit and one a Belgian, they play for different teams, yet both athletes have been tasting the novelty of training in the almost-constant sunshine of the South of France.
Eric Dier: Daily Telegraph interview and portrait
Football might not be the first thing that comes to mind when you think of the French Riviera’s assets, but there are two strong, UEFA Champions League clubs here. AS Monaco, thanks to the patronage of a Russian billionaire, rose from lower-league mediocrity 15 years ago to its current position in the top 10 of Ligue 1 (the highest level in French football). Its success is disproportionate to the tiny size of the principality – as I noticed when I was invited to a match there a few years ago. The opposing team, Toulouse FC, had more fans stumbling out of coaches than there were home team supporters, who were sprinkled across the empty stadium like salt on a salad. There are only a few thousand Monégasques, not all are active football supporters, and I was told it can be off-putting for the Monaco players to experience near-silence at their moments of glory. Even the ‘Salon d’Honneur‘, where I had the privilege of being invited after the match, seemed to have more waiters with trays of champagne than guests, and if I was encouraged to have my own photograph taken with a group of players, it was because there were very few other takers.
30km down the road, OGC Nice has more club supporters than Monaco has permanent residents. Its position in the league may not be as dominant as Monaco’s, and its name bizarrely misleading (OGC literally means Olympic Gymnast Club) but it still sits in Ligue 1. The eagle, and red and black stripes, of the club’s logo are a familiar sight in the area. Displayed on T-shirts, socca joint walls and white van bumper stickers, OGC affiliation is, along with the Nissart language, a strident symbol of proud Niçois identity: Nice is a far-from-the-capital force to be reckoned with.
Eric Dier (AS Monaco)
As most English people are all too aware, the only time that our keen footballing nation won the Cup of Cups was back in 1966, which most people agree was rather a long time ago now (sorry, fellow Brits, but one bonus of my French citizenship was sharing in the extraordinary elation of the France World Cup win in 2018. Nothing compares). Indeed, very few footballers know what it feels like to even score a goal for England during a World Cup game. Here is one of them:
Eric Dier. One of the only men ever to have scored for England in a World Cup match.
Eric Dier, at 32 years old, has represented England in two FIFA World Cups, and, in the 2018 match against Colombia, it was Eric who scored the decisive goal in a penalty shoot-out that won England the match. Clearly, he is a man who works well under pressure.
Photographers working with prominent football figures can need to work under pressure too. Sometimes the subject is very late, sometimes they suddenly have no time for a photographer – you never know what to expect. The day the Daily Telegraph had assigned me as photographer to make Eric Dier’s portrait, Jason Burt, the paper’s Chief Football Correspondent (with whom I’d made a portrait of football agent Rafaela Pimenta a couple of years before), came over from London to do the interview. Our slot had been booked by the club’s press liaison for 1 pm, but at 11.00 I saw a text from Jason saying it had been brought forward by an hour. Living an hour’s drive from Monaco, I knew that being punctual now was a vain hope, yet I grabbed my gear and drove as fast as I dared. Fortunately security were expecting a photographer. My car was immediately waived through the hallowed gates of the Monaco training ground, a parking spot was reserved by the door, and someone was waiting to help carry my lighting gear. We rushed in, under the (motivating or depressing, depending on your point of view) “Rise. Risk. Repeat” entrance slogan, through the maze of the building and reached the room where Jason was waiting… alone. As it turned out, we had plenty of time to catch up and settle in before Eric turned up – at the time originally planned.
Eric Dier, sporting his new AS Monaco kit
Relaxed and accommodating, Eric himself (probably oblivious of the schedule ‘adjustments’) was a pleasure to photograph. The training ground building had been entirely renovated since I last made a portrait there, and the upper terrace offered views of the training ground and Mediterranean Sea in the distance. Small talk flowed easily, and I remarked that his accent was difficult to place – the kind of ‘international accent’, familiar to me, that simultaneously hides one’s origins and makes them easy to understand in many cultures. He explained that he grew up in Portugal and speaks fluent Portuguese. It was clear that while he spent some years living in England (playing for Tottenham Hotspur), the Mediterranean sun and living around non-native English speakers is well within his comfort zone. He even told me he was up for the challenge of now learning French.
Despite the hovering press officers’ reservations, Eric said after two set-ups on the terrace that he was happy to do a third portrait indoors. Afterwards, as I packed up, he and Jason chatted alongside and Eric offered him a lift to the station. I was almost sorry I hadn’t taken the train too.
Charles Vanhoutte (OGC Nice)
The vibe was somewhat different when, a few months later, I headed to Nice for another portrait assignment, this time at OGC’s training ground. At the entrance – within view of the empty car park just inside – I was told by a uniformed security superior that “Non madame, you certainly cannot park here“. I unceremoniously unloaded my lighting gear into his little gatehouse, promptly filling it up, and spent the next few minutes waiting for someone to leave a parking space somewhere on the street outside. When I eventually came back, now on foot, an excitably-coloured sports car was revving loudly at the gate, its horn permanently engaged. The occupant, an angry-looking football player, had his exit blocked by an incoming car, whose own driver (another photographer on assignment, for all I knew) was in heated discussion with the same security guard. Another couple of players stalked out of the main entrance, and let the door slam as I reached it. The welcome was not warm, as my journalist colleague Pieter-Jan, freshly arrived from Belgium, observed.
Charles Vanhoutte, above the OGC Nice training ground
Charles Vanhoutte, however, the player we were there to see and the only other Belgian in the place, was as unassuming and polite as Eric had been. I was disappointed this time not to be able to understand anything that was said once the interview started, and once I had made a few photographs of the pair talking, I went to prepare the lighting set-up for the portrait. Just as in Monaco, OGC Nice’s training ground is a recent build, all shiny glass and metal, with another fine view from its roof terrace (here, the foothills of the French Alps could be spied in the background, rather than the Mediterranean). The last time I’d visited the building, it had been under the cover of a yellow hard-hat. I’d been commissioned by a magazine to make portraits of the bosses of the construction company who were in the process of building it. It looked like they’d done a good job.
By the time the press officer brought Charles and Pieter-Jan up to the terrace, the wind had got up, and I hadn’t been able to do the lighting tests properly, since the umbrella and light stand had been threatening to blow onto the pitch below. Charles, like Eric, was taller than I am (feeling ‘shorter’ than my subjects is an unusual event for me in France, and mildly disconcerting as a portrait photographer) so I enlisted the also-tall Pieter-Jan to raise and then stabilise the unit in the wind. I asked Charles how he liked his new French Riviera base – yet his enthusiasm for the perks of Nice seemed surprisingly muted. From the interview I read afterwards, it didn’t sound like the Côte d’Azur itself was a high point of his transfer. He was missing ‘simple, Flemish peasant food’ back home and said that no, his new home didn’t have a swimming pool or a sea view, why would it? It made sense: the high point of any buzz news about Charles online at that time was a photograph of him arriving at training with a simple supermarket shopping bag (bemusingly, a source of viral shock). The French Riviera glamour vibe was perhaps irrelevant to him.
Charles Vanhoutte
Little more was said during the few minutes I spent photographing Charles. Once he realised I wasn’t Belgian, any chattiness evaporated. He made it clear in the most polite way possible that he didn’t really want to be photographed, so we kept things brief and efficient. When I finished, he shook my hand warmly and expressed an earnest “Thank you, madame“, which had the effect of my feeling both competent and matronly at the same time. He and Pieter-Jan then got straight back into conversation, swimming in the unintelligible, long Flemish vowels that Charles had maybe missed since his move, and left to informally continue the interview over lunch, where they wouldn’t be bothered by the hovering press officer. The press officer himself didn’t grasp this of course, just as he presumably hadn’t understood any part of the formal interview already conducted…
See the Nieuwsblad feature with my photographs of Charles Vanhoutte here
See the Daily Telegraph feature with my portrait of Eric Dier here
> See Portrait portfolio
