"If god took my brother, it was because he wanted me to do something in football"

The Marseille match-fixing scandal turned Emmanuel Petit into a zombie, but the midfielder hit back to become a champion with Arsenal and France, driven by a desire to honour the sibling he lost as a teenager

- By Arthur Renard

“When I won the World Cup, there was a feeling of serenity. I had fulfilled the promise I made to myself. I’d reached the target.”

For any footballer, lifting the World Cup is the pinnacle – a life-changing moment. For Emmanuel Petit, there was a deeper, more personal meaning when Les Bleus beat Brazil at the Stade de France in 1998.

“I was interviewed by French TV straight after the match,” Petit tells FourFourTwo. “I remember saying how proud I was to win the World Cup in front of our own fans. Then I said, ‘I just want to say to my family: this is it! I did it. I did it!’ I got very emotional – I was almost ready to cry on camera. The people in France knew about my story. On TV, it had a big impact.”

Petit’s story is a heartbreaking one. In 1988, the midfielder was with his parents in Monaco, having recently signed for Les Monegasques as a teenager, when they received a devastating call from Dieppe, back home in Normandy. His elder brother, Olivier, had been playing for amateur side Arques that afternoon. “A friend phoned and told my father that my brother had died on the pitch,” Petit, 52, recounts now. “I remember my father smashing his face into the wall. He was so distressed. It was the first time I’d seen him cry.”