LIKE all footballers, Julien Faubert receives special attention whenever he is out shopping, at an airport or simply walking down the street.
The Kilmarnock player is not like all footballers, though. He is French, black and a Muslim. This is not an easy thing to be in this day and age. Indeed, when strangers take one look at you and think either “terrorist” or “thief” such stigmatism or, to be more frank and, indeed, honest, overt racism is hard to ignore.
We are sitting in the home dugout at Rugby Park to talk religion, extremism, the Paris attacks and, of course, football on a bright, sunny day. The man beside me is charming, clearly intelligent and extremely happy in his own skin.
The problem being not everyone is fine with what and who he is, which is why Faubert would rather live in a hotel in the Rugby Park car park than his own country, and that’s the sad truth.
“In France, and I have to be straight with you here, you can actually feel the racism,” he says. “You feel it from them all the time. For example, if I am in a luxury shop, I can sense the people there thinking ‘why is this black guy in here and what is he up to?’
“But if my family went to Harrods, for example, then nobody watches us, nobody was looking at you. They were there to help you. That is London. It is not France.
“Both my sons speak English as a first language. My family live in Barcelona but we have a British mentality. When we got back to France now, and I played in Bordeaux for three years, we get depressed.
“My wife always says ‘look at the mentality of the people. Everyone is on their own, nobody is talking to each other.”
It is depressing enough to hear it never mind to live it.
The so-called Islamic State, at least those claiming to represent the terrorist group, killed 130 people in the French capital in November of last year.
For those of us watching on television, it did seem that there was togetherness in the days after the massacre. Sadly, if anything, the divides which already existed were forced further apart.
“Race is still a big issue in France,” Faubert says with a sigh. “It is actually got worse after the Paris attacks. Listen, of course I don’t agree with what happened. It was horrific. These are stupid people who hide behind the religion of Islam. That is not Islam.
“And now there are Muslims in France who feel frightened. Listen, I am a modern guy. I am the Muslim they want, if you know what I mean. But there are some who are aggressive with their actions and words. They are not helping.
“I admit I feel like a target. Whenever I get a flight, and this is most of the time, the people working at the airport will come to me, nobody else, and ask for my passport and details. They would not say that to you but, and I have to be honest here, I do understand that. In some ways I actually prefer that. I want to feel secure as well.
“But I go back to what happened in Paris. The people are not making it easier for any of us. What can you do? It’s the modern world. But what I would say is that these horrible things are about money as much as anything else.
“When you are famous, you have to be careful about what you say about such things. I can talk about it but people have so many strong and different opinions. I know my own mind and what I think about what they did.
“These people kill us (he says pointing at his heart). They kill our reputation. For me, the base of any religion is tolerance. We have these people everywhere and now there are in Europe. Everyone wants to live in peace and feel secure. If you feel as if you are at war then that is so horrible.”
Faubert has had an interesting life and career. He was a cult hero with West Ham United, had a loan spell at Real Madrid no less and was the first French player to wear the No10 jersey for the national team following Zinedine Zidane’s retirement. Although he only won that one cap, scoring the winner against Bosnia-Herzegovina.
He feels himself to be a fortunate man when he looks back at what he has achieved and where he came from.
“I am from Le Havre and the part of the city I come from is really poor. There are about 15 professional footballers who have come from this area alone. Why? There aren’t a lot of opportunities. There is football or you can be a bad-boy and go to prison.
“You have a choice to make. I chose well. To be fair, I had a good education, a straight education, and my mum brought me well. I mastered in school. I ended up pretty high there. But I wanted to play football, I had good educators around me, not just at school but at the clubs I played for. I also always believed in myself and I did work hard.
“To do this job, playing football, to wake up in the morning and train for two hours is the best job in the world. I really can’t complain. I have seen how other people have had to work, how hard they have had to work. My own mother got up at 4.00am to look after us. That has stayed with me.
“I am lucky. Don’t think I am not aware of this. I have two kids and there are going to have a completely different life to me. That is why I have won this life. I have given them another way.
Of his many tattoos, he has one of a fish swimming upstream. “What it means is that when bad things happen in my life, I will keep going. I like that philosophy.”
And speaking of bad things, it does seem likely that Kilmarnock will now finish in the play-off place That gives them two games to prevent the club from relegation.
Faubert speaks warmly of the football club he joined in February, his team-mates and manager Lee Clark. But it is not them he thinks about when he addresses the dressing room about matters in hand.
“I went through this at West Ham. We went down and I saw people, good people, lose their jobs. I say to the guys that we need to understand this is not just about football, it is about life. There are people at Kilmarnock with kids and mortgages.
“We have their lives between our feet. We have to give everything to stay up.”
Faubert has given everything his whole life. He is not about to change. Kilmarnock and Scottish football are lucky to have him.
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