Karl Toko Ekambi again attacked Lyon supporters in a podcast from L’Équipe this Friday, returning to the many whistles he was the target of when he was still playing under the tunic of OL. The current Stade Rennes striker denounces “crazy people”.
Karl Toko Ekambi gives a layer. Already very harsh with Lyon supporters in an interview for SoFoot in early April, the Stade Rennais striker once again responded to criticism from Lyon supporters of him in L’Équipe’s foot & rap podcast, Une-deux. And the one who left OL in the winter transfer window in the form of a paying loan without an option to buy is not going with a dead hand.
“I’m going to cry for people who don’t know football?”
Asked if the whistles aimed at him at Groupama Stadium touched him, Karl Toko Ekambi replied: “It’s simple, I play football, it’s my job, I have a salary at the end of the month, I have to do the job. It’s a show, those in the stands have paid for their place, so if they have fun spending money and then whistling the actors, that’s their problem.”
“They don’t know where I come from to get here. Today I’m happy, I scored a brace the day before yesterday. And the whistles didn’t change anything, I’m going to keep going. I just ‘down there, I couldn’t even imagine being able to achieve a fifth of what I achieved today. And I’m going to cry for people who don’t know football?
“Each time I reversed the trend”
While some Lyonnais argue that Karl Toko Ekambi has been whistled by supporters since he made a “shh” while celebrating a goal against Montpellier in April 2022, the striker has another analysis: “In Lyon I have been whistled since that I put a post against Bayern. And each time I reversed the trend. I score goals, they stop whistling, I don’t score for two games, they breathe. It’s not from the season last.”
“Besides last season I scored 18 goals, when I was at the CAN and I missed a month and a half. And this year, they whistled me from the start of the season. So the problem does not date from today. I scored more than 50 goals in Lyon, they do not know football. This winter there were plenty of clubs who wanted me when “I was useless”. you’re no one, nobody wants you.”
“A madman who is drunk in the stands, am I going to listen to him frankly?”
“You start football at 5 years old and I am 30 today. That is to say that for 25 years I tried to get to that day, to those matches. And it’s difficult, all the children these days they dream of playing football. Except that not all of them can do it. I don’t understand how someone who has tried for 40 years to play football (the supporters) because it is often people in their forties who whistle at me, can criticize someone who has succeeded. I did not succeed in the CFA: I played the LDC, the CDM, the CAN, the League 1, La Liga… Does that mean that there are a lot of professionals from all those clubs who were wrong about me? And it’s someone who is at home, who has tried, who speaks behind his microphone who is right?
“If the coach takes me aside, shows me videos and tells me everything that’s wrong, in the week in training I’ll correct him. When it’s a crazy drunk in the stands who talks, what am I going to listen to honestly? Aulas has already told me “that’s not good”, I listen to him. And I correct and I progress. But the crazy people in the stands? I don’t listen to them not.”
