Viviane Asseyi says Zidane inspired her childhood football dream

“When I was four, I said I wanted to be like Zidane,” Viviane Asseyi recalls. The West Ham forward reflects on how her dream began, in front of the 1998 World Cup, and on the relationships that still help her move forward in football.

“It all started with the 1998 World Cup,” she says. After watching France beat Brazil, she asked her mother for a football and said she wanted to play and be like Zinedine Zidane. The first ball her mother bought was a cheap, lightweight plastic one. Asseyi wanted one like Zidane’s: “No, no, no, I want the same ball as Zidane.”

At school, she said she wanted to become a professional footballer. With women’s football scarcely visible, her teachers thought she was a little crazy, while her friends, who played too, understood her ambition. “Every day I would just go to school and play with them,” she remembers. Her family sometimes laughed at how skinny she was and wondered how she would cope against stronger opponents, but Asseyi says they were firmly behind her as well.

Born in France to Gabonese parents, she grew up surrounded by Gabonese culture. Her path took her to Clairefontaine, which she describes as an important place for young players. She says that after a selection process involving tests, her family cried when they read the news. She did not: her attention was fixed on football and the chance to live her dream.

That family connection remains part of her life as a player. After a Saturday match, Asseyi called her mother, as they almost routinely do after games. She was annoyed: West Ham had just lost 3-0 at Brighton, although the gap in shots, shots on target and touches in the opposition box was smaller than the score suggested. “She was just laughing,” Asseyi says of her mother. Her mother told her she had been “so bad”, but that honesty helped: her mother can tell her anything, and Asseyi says she will keep working to improve.

Asseyi says she really lives the game. Feeling valued and being part of a positive group matter to her too: “When you feel valued by everyone, when there is mutual respect everywhere, you will always feel good and want to give everything.” She describes a team that arrives with a smile and, even after a defeat, comes back ready to give everything.

Her attachment to West Ham is also reflected in her longevity at the club. She scored in the team’s 2-1 win over London City Lionesses last month. Asseyi has made 117 appearances for West Ham and could, according to The Guardian, surpass Kate Longhurst’s WSL-era total of 130. It is another strand of her story: a childhood dream inspired by Zidane, now part of a long career at the club.