Iliman Ndiaye is heading into the World Cup with a line that cuts straight through the noise: France is not part of his story. Speaking before Tuesday’s 21:00 match against the Bleus, the Senegal forward said the French national team had never made him dream, setting his own path against the scale of the occasion.
That matters now because Ndiaye is not speaking as an outsider to high-pressure football. He was born in Rouen, built early memories at FC Rouen Sapin and now arrives at the tournament after a mixed spell at Olympique de Marseille and a later rise at Everton. His words frame the match as something more personal than a simple group-stage meeting. For him, it is a test against a team he does not see as part of his footballing imagination.
Ndiaye traced that view back to childhood. He said he first played with FC Rouen Sapin when he was about 6 years old and still remembers the scene clearly. His father trained him alone on the terrain rouge beside the club, working on dribbling with cones, and he said everything he knows how to do he owes to his father. That influence was not only technical. Ndiaye said his father had been a choreographer, shaping the body feints and postures that became part of his game.
The family route also explains why Marseille came into the picture the way it did. At Rouen, his father offered him two clubs to test with: PSG or OM. Ndiaye said OM was his club of heart from always, and that he could not say no when the club came for him from the English second division. He had already spent one season at the Association in 2010-2011 after being accepted there, and a few years later, while at Sheffield United, he learned OM was thinking about him.
Yet the move was not as simple as devotion alone. Ndiaye said he had doubts about whether 2023 was the ideal time to join Marseille, even though he signed there that year. The hesitation sits beside his loyalty: he loved the club, but the timing still gave him pause. What he did not doubt was the reaction when he arrived. He said the supporters’ welcome in Marseille was crazy, that he expected only three people to be there, and that he thought such a scene was reserved for Alexis Sanchez and others. “I have no words, it was so crazy,” he said.
That mix of belonging and uncertainty is why this moment carries weight. Ndiaye is now at a point in his career where he has lived the rougher side of Marseille, found stability at Everton and carries Senegal into a match against France on Tuesday at 21:00. The fixture gives his remarks a sharper edge: a player born in France, shaped by Senegalese family roots and still defining his own story is about to face the country he says never made him dream.
