ELEVEN OF LEGEND IN CLAMART

Eleven of legend is the meeting of autistic and neurotypical children.

In the language of football, a “legendary eleven” is a team composed of dream players. This is the challenge taken up by journalist and producer Caroline Delage, who has just produced a documentary highlighting the encounter between autistic and neurotypical children on the pitch.

THE “ELEVEN OF LEGEND” PROJECT

The Legendary Eleven project was launched at the end of 2021.

For 6 months, the PSG Foundation and the Decathlon Foundation supported children aged 9 to 11, through football training every Wednesday. All these trainings were free and supervised by specialists.

Football, and sport in general, is a real tool for social inclusion, allowing these children to get to know each other, to understand each other and to share moments in life.

The documentary is now available just here onCanal +.

THE TESTIMONY OF DECATHLON PROJECT LEADERS

Antoine, store manager of Paris Aquaboulevard :

-Why did you want to get involved in this project?

“I wanted to get involved because my main objective has always been to accompany and support projects that are full of human values.
When Caroline from AuTableau production came to present the project to me and asked us if we were up for it with the Decathlon Aquaboulevard collective, it seemed obvious.”

-What was your involvement in this project? 

“We were therefore involved through 2 prism:
-> The possibility of equipping the entire Onze de Légende team at a lower cost to enable them to access practice more quickly.

-> Organising human support by being present at training sessions with the children to enable them to practice in the best possible conditions.”

-What do you remember about this project? A special memory? 

“The most striking impacts were the moments shared with the children where we could see their pleasure in training or discovering this sport together. We finally retain from this project that sport brings everyone together, in all conditions, to live a single common objective: to have fun and to have a smile on the face of each child who participated in the project!

One of the most memorable moments was seeing a group of children playing together as they went along, moving from a phase of observation to one of action and taking the initiative!”

Nicolas, former teammate of the Paris Aquaboulevard store :

-Why did you want to get involved in this project?

“I decided to get involved in this project because Antoine initially asked me to be part of it.  I’m passionate about football and the fact that it’s a project aimed at the inclusion of children with disabilities made sense. I had already organised a regional swimming championship for people with disabilities (motor and mental) during my BTS (technical sales diploma) and I really enjoyed this project.”

-What was your involvement in this project? 

“My involvement with Antoine and the others was to participate in the Wednesday morning training sessions with the PSG foundation. We were in charge of accompanying the children and helping them during the exercises. We were often placed with the children who were a little more difficult to help them with their concentration and the execution of the training.”

-What do you remember about this project? A special memory? 

“I remember this project as a joint benevolence of all the accompanying persons / journalists / production etc. We were all focused on the well-being of the children and the success of this beautiful project. We were all focused on the well-being of the children and the success of this beautiful project. For 6 months, we saw the children helping each other and showing understanding towards each other. With each session they became more and more comfortable with each other, I found this mutual support really touching. The time spent with them was wonderful and I always enjoyed meeting them on Wednesdays. I also learnt a lot from them, the disabilities of each one, their differences which made them strong. You had to listen to their needs and be patient.

My most striking memory was with little Emile, because he had a crisis during one of the last training sessions, he didn’t want to come on the field and absolutely wanted to wear a particular football shirt. Antoine and I took our time to calm him down, to listen to him in order to understand what he was going through and to help him because it was quite violent, his head was hurting etc.

But after spending this time alone with him, we managed to take Emile to go to the field.”

Congratulations to the Decathlon Paris Aquaboulevard teams for their commitment, to the PSG Foundation and to Au Tableau Productions for this documentary full of humour and emotion.

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