N'Golo Kante

N'Golo Kanté est un footballeur professionnel français

N'Golo Kanté ( born 29 March 1991) is a French professional footballer who plays as a defensive midfielder for English club Chelsea and the France national team.

He made his senior debut at Boulogne and then spent two seasons at Caen, the latter in Ligue 1. In 2015, he joined Leicester City for a fee of £5.6 million and became an integral member of the club's first ever Premier League win in his only season at the club. The following year, he joined Chelsea for a reported fee of £32 million, winning the league again in his first season. He also won the PFA Players' Player of the Year and FWA Footballer of the Year and became the first outfield player to win back-to-back English league titles with different clubs since Eric Cantona in 1992 and 1993.

Kanté made his senior international debut for France in 2016. He was included in their squad that finished runners-up at that year's European Championship. Two years later, he was a key member of the French team that won the 2018 FIFA World Cup.

On 17 May 2018, he was called up to the 23-man French squad for the 2018 FIFA World Cup in Russia. On 15 July, Kanté started in France's 4–2 win over Croatia in the final of the tournament.

Kanté's parents migrated to France from Mali in 1980, and he grew up in a small flat in Rueil-Malmaison, Hauts-de-Seine. He is named after King Ngolo Diarra of the Bamana Empire. As of 2017, his younger sister was in the youth system at Suresnes. At the start of his professional career at Boulogne, he commuted to training by kick scooter, and as of 2018 he drove a Mini Hatch, interpreted by BBC Sport's Paul Fletcher as showing he is "uninterested in displaying his wealth". His former teammate Éric Vandenabeele recalls that Kante is a devout Muslim and prays regularly. In his early career, Kante was a regular visitor of a mosque in Boulogne with his then-teammate Harouna Abou Demba.