Kurt Zouma interview: I wear the armband but we’re all captains at West Ham
urt Zouma is now a couple of months into his tenure as West Ham captain, but the novelty is still compounded whenever he happens to bump into the seemingly omnipresent figure of Mark Noble.
“Every time he sees me, he calls me ‘skipper’,” he says. “It’s weird for me, because I used to call him that.”
When Noble, now the club’s sporting director, retired two years ago, David Moyes had a decision to make in name only as to who would inherit the armband, Declan Rice long established as heir. Following Rice’s departure for Arsenal this summer, though, the succession plan was less clear.
Stalwarts such as Aaron Cresswell, Angelo Ogbonna and Lukasz Fabianski had the experience, but also doubts over where, or how much, they would play this term. James Ward-Prowse, club captain at Southampton, was touted as a contender even having only just signed, as was Harry Maguire, who never did. In the end, though, it was Zouma offered the nod.
James Ward-Prowse was in contention.
/ Getty ImagesGiven that less than two years ago, the defender’s career threatened to be defined by an animal abuse scandal, it is tempting to frame this latest development as another step in his personal rehabilitation and another deliberate show of a faith from Moyes in a player he has stuck by throughout. The reality, though, is less grandiose and less confected.
Internally, the incident has been consigned to the past, and Moyes explained last month that having made Zouma (left, training this week) stand-in skipper while the Hammers’ final squad took shape, he saw no reason to change tack after impressive individual and collective starts.
“I didn’t know it was going to be me,” Zouma tells Standard Sport. “He told me in front of the boys — and we are all captains in this team. Everyone speaks, everyone tries to motivate players, not only me. I’m just wearing the armband and try to do the best I can. It was a proud moment for me.”
Born in Lyon in 1994, Zouma grew up on the legend of the France team that became world and European champions either side of the century’s end, and it is little surprise that he cites the great leaders of that era as his early inspiration. “I would say Marcus Thuram, Marcel Desailly, those kind of players,” he says.
I played with John Terry and Didier Drogba … when you’re doing badly, they let you know.
“I had the chance to play with John Terry [at Chelsea] as well, who was a big character, Didier Drogba, those kinds of people. When you’re doing badly, [they let] you know. There’s no chance to make mistakes with them.”
With the Hammers seventh in the Premier League, beaten only by Manchester City and Liverpool, and looking to make it two wins out of two in the Europa League in Freiburg tonight, Zouma has not yet had to dish out many such rollockings, which is just as well.
“I don’t think as much as them!” he says, when asked whether he has the same kind of rocket in his armoury. “But they’re top people as well; when you speak to them, they always have the right words to motivate you. I’ve kind of taken that from them.”
With Zouma’s new job, though, comes greater responsibility than simply that of rousing the troops. There is that of spokesman, for instance — he was talking this week as the club’s representative as they celebrated the recognition of their outstanding work in equality, diversity and inclusion at the London Stadium, the Frenchman having been phased back into regular media duties.
There is diplomacy, too, in dealing with referees, an aspect that, you sense from his smirk, does not come quite so naturally. He is careful to talk up the importance of mutual respect and empathises with a tough, thankless profession, but believes some of this season’s rule changes are unnecessarily “complicated”, is not a fan of elongated added time and chuckles when conversation arrives at the subject of VAR.
“Sometimes it’s kind of tough,” he says. “Everyone makes mistakes, but when you’re the one who gets the wrong decision, it’s difficult to accept it.”
Then there is the task of maintaining a healthy, united dressing room, one rumoured to have fractured at times last season, but this term has provided an environment into which Ward-Prowse and Edson Alvarez have seamlessly embedded, while the Europa Conference League triumph of last June continues to furnish the old guard with a post-Prague glow.
“Our bond became even tighter, we grew closer together,” Zouma says. “You should have seen the celebrations. It was crazy — we celebrated for two straight days with no sleep.”
When they meet around the training ground or in the players’ tunnel after a match day, Zouma still refers to Noble as his skipper. For the second time in as many seasons, though, the armband and that responsibility has passed.
.jpg.jpg?width=1200&auto=webp&quality=75)
