Nearly 250 matches with ASSE, Deguerville now works in a supermarket on minimum wage

Christophe Deguerville, former professional left-back who played for Saint-Etienne, Lyon and Bastia, today earns “a little more than minimum wage” working as a shelf-stacker in a supermarket. More than twenty years after hanging up his boots, the man who played nearly 250 matches in an AS Saint-Etienne shirt and over 400 professional matches in total fully accepts this trajectory.

When he ended his career in 2003, Deguerville deliberately chose to turn his back on football. Without a diploma and little attracted to a career change in the sport, he briefly tried coaching young players before quickly giving it up. His disenchantment is clear: “Most of them only dream of making money. They don’t have a passion for the game. And then the parents push from behind, convinced their child will bring them millions. I don’t know if it’s sad. It’s just the world changing.”

He then turned to activities unrelated to sport. He first worked as a seasonal worker in orchards, participating in fruit harvests. “I need to keep busy and earn a living,” he explained in 2020. Since then, he has settled into retail, where he arrives early in the morning to stock shelves.

Faced with the gap between his current life and that of a professional footballer, Deguerville shows neither bitterness nor nostalgia. “I’ve become like millions of other French people,” he sums up, before adding with deliberate detachment: “After all, I just kicked a ball around. That remains my point of view.”

His relationship with ASSE, the club where he spent most of his career, remains that of an ordinary supporter. He goes to Geoffroy-Guichard with his daughter, who has a season ticket at the stadium, and pays for his ticket like any other spectator.