West Ham’s Viviane Asseyi: ‘When I was four I said I wanted to be like Zidane’

French forward on how the 1998 World Cup inspired her football dream, her Gabonese background and finding a new family in east London

On Saturday, once West Ham’s Viviane Asseyi was home from the match, she picked up her phone and called her mum. It has become almost ritualistic for them to speak after a game.

On the other end came a familiar sound. “She was just laughing,” says Asseyi. “She was like: ‘Oh, you were so bad!’ She was laughing but that helped me. She knows that she can tell me anything and everything, I’m good, I’m not good. I will just keep going and working to be better.”