Few gamers in soccer historical past can boast of getting the sort of summer time that Emmanuel Petit loved in 1998.
The midfielder’s home marketing campaign ended with a Premier League and FA Cup double, as Petit’s determination to half methods with reigning Ligue 1 champions Monaco and reunite along with his outdated boss Arsene Wenger at Arsenal was shortly vindicated.
That was the proper option to put together for a World Cup on residence soil, with Petit put in within the coronary heart of the Les Bleus midfield, handing him the prospect to fulfil a childhood dream.
What Petit mentioned earlier than his World Cup last objective
France claimed a first-ever World Cup win in 1998 (Picture credit score: Getty Photographs)
Petit performed in all bar one among France’s matches on the way in which to the ultimate in Paris that summer time, netting his maiden worldwide objective within the group stage win over Denmark, however extra was to return within the last towards Brazil when he managed a objective and an help.
“As a toddler, even earlier than France had been chosen to host, I wrote that we’d someday win the World Cup, at residence, 2-0 towards Brazil within the last,” he tells FourFourTwo, talking in affiliation with BetVictor.
Zinedine Zidane heads residence an Emmanual Petit nook to open the scoring for France
“We received 3-0 and I scored the third to interrupt my very own dream! Marcel Desailly obtained a purple card at 2-0, so I dropped in at centre-back with Frank Leboeuf.
“With 5 minutes left, the noise was intense, and I yelled at him that my dream got here true. He mentioned, ‘What?! Think about the sport!’
“Then I scored from Patrick Vieira’s cross – the Each day Mirror entrance web page was us and the headline: ‘Arsenal win the World Cup’. We had been so pleased with that.”
Petit and Vieira’s twin membership and nation partnership would final one other two years, with the previous transferring on from Arsenal in the summertime of 2000, when France would observe up their World Cup success by profitable the European Championship.
Petit’s World Cup win got here after he received a league and cup double with Arsenal (Picture credit score: Getty Photographs)
Barcelona was Petit’s subsequent port of name when he and Marc Overmars headed to the Camp Nou in a joint £7million transfer, however accidents restricted him to only 23 La Liga appearances and he would return to the Premier League with Chelsea, the ultimate cease of his profession. FourFourTwo would go on to rank him at no. 95 of their listing of the 100 greatest-ever Premier League gamers.
Petit would win 63 France caps throughout his 13-year worldwide profession, scoring six occasions, none greater than that memorable objective towards Brazil on the Stade de France in 1998.
