“Mercato”: a breathtaking thriller behind the scenes of football with Jamel Debbouze

“Football, he has changed”. This sentence, borrowed from a Kylian Mbappé questioned on the management of his image in May 2022, is found as it is in the mouth of a character of “transfer window”. It could serve as a watchword for this thriller directed by Tristan Séguéla. The director of “Doctor?” “,” A happy man “and the Netflix series” Tapie “plunges us behind the scenes of professional football. And it’s captivating.

“Mercato”, in theaters this Wednesday, was initiated by Jamel Debbouze, a large connoisseur of the round ball and friend of many footballers and players of players for forty years. In this film, the actor embodies Driss Berzane, a players’ agent. While he has broke since one of his footballers has been suspended from PSG, one of his relations, which leaves prison, claims 300,000 euros in “commissions” on the wages of an athlete. Driss has eight days to organize a gold transfer and save your skin.

He then tries several tracks. Sign up in a large club his foal Mehdi Bentarek, who has taken a little taste of night boxes and Gin Tonic, drags with rappers and influencers and won the nickname “Mehdi Escobar”. Sell ​​to a German club Erwin, a 12 -year -old kid he has been following for his 4 years. Or become the agent of a star player, Felix Gassama, and transfer him to Saudi Arabia.

A “speed” and tender agent who sacrifices himself for his players

Led 100 per hour on background of countdown and electronic music, “Mercato” dissects football business. We think of Mbappé, but also of Pogba, Ronaldo, Neymar … If the character of Bentarek is delightfully caricatured, the film avoids the demonization of the most popular sport industry in the world. Particularly through exchanges between Driss and his 15 -year -old son, a vegetarian and green idealist who considers that football, it is “slavery”. “Mercato” paints the portrait of an agent who is not a cynical parasite who came to eat on the beast, but “a shrink, a baby-sitter and a punching-ball”. Above all, a passionate who struggles and sacrifices herself for his players.