PHNOM PENH: Dribbling a football, Antoine Lemarie might be thousands of miles from home, but the journeyman is now on top of the world having landed his first professional football contract and scored online fame—in Cambodia.

The 27-year-old midfielder went viral on YouTube after his unexpected signing to the Cambodian Premier League’s Boeung Ket FC in the capital Phnom Penh. Having posted videos on his channel since 2020, Lemarie was shocked at the response to footage of his first match for the “Blue Dragons”, which racked up more than 140,000 views.

“I was stunned, it’s so unlikely,” he told AFP. “My life has changed completely,” he added, explaining he was signed after years of struggling as an amateur in Europe. He will live and play in Cambodia until May under a contract worth several thousand dollars, with the club providing a flat—and a scooter for his daily commute.

Lemarie has documented online the difficult conditions and scant rewards in the lower reaches of the European game while he worked part-time as an ice-cream seller, pizza delivery man, removal man and valet to make ends meet. He made headlines last year after leaving a third division Greek club, alleging that the manager had threatened to assault him. His experience shone a light on the unscrupulous side of the sport, where young players can be vulnerable to exploitation and abuse.

“There were many ups and downs, very low moments, bad encounters,” he said. His YouTube channel has more than 20,000 subscribers, many based in France, and it is where he posts videos of his experiences both on and off the field.

“It is also interesting to show a bit of the life around me, as I am not in a random club, I am in Cambodia,” he said. “For them, it is interesting to discover another country, I think.” Cambodian football suffers from crumbling infrastructure and relative anonymity, but Lemarie is part of a small coterie of foreigners plying their trade in south-east Asian country. Boeung Ket coach Hong Pheng told AFP that overseas players were an asset and he welcomed the extra attention brought by his newest player. — AFP