Clamart

Legendary eleven

This project is an encounter between autistic and neurotypical children.

In soccer parlance, a “legendary eleven” is a team made up 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 legendary eleven 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, with soccer training every Wednesday. All training sessions were free of charge and supervised by specialists.

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

Watch the documentary

Why did you decide to get involved in this project?
I wanted to get involved because my primary 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 if we’d be interested in working with the Decathlon Aquaboulevard collective, it seemed like the obvious thing to do.

What was your involvement in this project?
We were involved through 2 prism:
-> The possibility of equipping the entire Onze de Légende team at a lower cost to give them faster access to practice.

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

What do you remember about this project? An outstanding 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. In the final analysis, this project shows that sport brings everyone together, in all conditions, to achieve a single common goal: to have fun and put a smile on the face of every child taking part in the project!

One of my most vivid memories is of 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!

Antoine

Store Manager, Paris Aquaboulevard

Nicolas

Former Decathlon employee at the Paris Aquaboulevard store

Why did you decide 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 soccer and the fact that it was a project focused on the inclusion of disabled children made sense. I’d already organized a regional swimming championship for people with motor and mental disabilities during my BTS Technico-commercial diploma, and I really enjoyed the project.

How did you get involved in the project?
My involvement with Antoine and the others was to take part 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 more difficult children to help them concentrate and carry out the training.

What do you remember about this project? An outstanding memory?
What I retain from this project is the shared benevolence of all the support staff / journalists / production staff etc. We were all focused on the well-being of the children and the success of this wonderful project. We were all focused on the well-being of the children and the success of this wonderful project. For 6 months, we saw the children helping and understanding each other. With each session, they became more and more at ease with each other, and I found this mutual support really touching. The time spent with them was wonderful, and I always enjoyed meeting up with them on Wednesdays. I also learned a great deal from them, about each other’s disabilities and the differences that made them so strong. You had to listen to their needs and be patient.

My most vivid memory was with little Émile, who had had a tantrum during one of the last training sessions, when he didn’t want to come out onto the pitch and insisted on wearing a particular soccer shirt. Antoine and I took our time to calm him down, listen to him to understand what he was going through and help him, because it was quite violent, he was hurting his head and so on. But after spending some time alone with him, we managed to get Emile out onto the pitch.