West Ham’s Viviane Asseyi: ‘When I was four I said I wanted to be like Zidane’

French forward on how the 1998 World Cup inspired her football dream, her Gabonese background and finding a new family in east London

On Saturday, once West Ham’s Viviane Asseyi was home from the match, she picked up her phone and called her mum. It has become almost ritualistic for them to speak after a game.

On the other end came a familiar sound. “She was just laughing,” says Asseyi. “She was like: ‘Oh, you were so bad!’ She was laughing but that helped me. She knows that she can tell me anything and everything, I’m good, I’m not good. I will just keep going and working to be better.”

When Asseyi had called, she was annoyed. West Ham had lost 3-0 at Brighton and, despite the home team dominating possession, the Hammers were far closer to their opponents in terms of shots, shots on target and touches in the opposition box than the score suggested. “I’m someone who really lives the game,” the forward says.

The collective laughter of her family has been a constant. Asseyi was born in France to Gabonese parents and spent her childhood with Gabonese culture around her. Her parents were so determined she have a relationship with her African heritage that everyone ate together on Sundays and the food, music and things happening in the country were always around.

She was four when she asked her mum to buy her a football. “It all started with the World Cup in 1998,” she says. “I watched the French winning against Brazil and after the game I said to my mum: ‘Buy me a football. I want to play football. I want to be like [Zinedine] Zidane.’

“We are a family who laugh at each other a lot. In the beginning there was a lot of laughing because I was really skinny and they were like: ‘How will you play? People are so much stronger than you!’ They were just laughing because that is the mood of the family, but they were really directly behind me.”

Asseyi embraced the laughter then, as she does now, but the tiny, skinny child was deadly serious. “First my mum bought me one of the fake balls, the cheap light plastic ones,” she says. “She saw it and thought I wouldn’t know the difference but I was like: ‘No no no, I want the same ball as Zidane.’”

Her family embraced it, but her teachers didn’t.

“You know when you are at school and you have to say what you want to be when you grow up? I always said I wanted to be a professional footballer, that I wanted to be like Zidane. The teacher was like: ‘Is she OK?’ Women’s football wasn’t visible then, so all the teachers thought that I was crazy, but my friends understood, because they all played football. Every day I would just go to school and play with them.”

Her mum put her in clubs in Normandy, where she grew up. Eventually, the journey took her to the home of French football, when she earned a place at the national football centre in Clairefontaine. When the letter arrived confirming she had a place, it was “a dream”.

“I wanted to do the same as Zidane and, for me, Clairefontaine was the national team. It’s the best place you can be when you are young. [Kylian] Mbappé went there, so many players come through there.

“You go through some tests beforehand and from across the whole of France you are one of, like, 13 to 15 who get in. So, it’s a really big opportunity. I read the letter and my mum, all my family, were just crying around me. I was the only one who wasn’t, because I was so focused on the football and my dream and having the opportunity to live my dream every day.”

At Clairefontaine, boys and girls are treated the same. They are in school together and eat together. Asseyi became friends there with the goalkeeper Alphonse Areola, who is now also at West Ham. “We were in the same class,” she says. “Outside of that, we were friends, all the time together, chilling.” Raphaël Guerreiro, who has gone on to play for Portugal, was also a friend and part of her cohort. “At school his favourite player was Cristiano Ronaldo and he went on to win the Euros with him, which was crazy.”

Life away from her family, seeing them only at weekends, helped prepare her for the nomadic life of a footballer. Asseyi spent time with Rouen, Montpellier, Marseille and Bordeaux before having two years in Germany with Bayern Munich. She swapped Bavaria for London in 2022 and is in her fifth season with West Ham.

She has played 117 times for the club and will probably break Kate Longhurst’s WSL era record of 130 West Ham appearances. Asseyi instantly sensed she had found a second family there.

“When you feel valued by everyone, when there is mutual respect everywhere, you will always feel good and want to give everything,” she says.

As one of the more experienced players and vice-captain, 32-year-old Asseyi is part of setting the culture and standards. “It’s an easy job when you have a team like this because everyone comes here with a smile,” she says. “We lose games sometimes, but everyone just comes back here ready to give everyone everything”

West Ham have two wins from their opening seven games. Asseyi says consistency is missing and is sure results will improve. “It’s sometimes mental and it’s sometimes about the small details,” she says.

Asseyi relishes her role as a visible Black female footballer. When she was growing up, the tennis champion Serena Williams was her idol. “I didn’t previously understand or recognise how much we can inspire people,” Asseyi says. “But the more and more I see, and the more people reach out on social media and in other ways, telling me that I inspired them and thanking me for everything, the more I see what we can do.

“We just go on the pitch and enjoy playing with our teammates and we don’t necessarily realise the impact it has on small girls watching, that maybe want to be you or are just inspired by your football. I’m happy if I can inspire anyone and will do my best to do it more. It’s good for my family too. My mum always told me to never forget that a lot of people are looking at me and to be a good role model, to give everything and never give up because I can help that next generation do the same.”