On Wednesday his job takes him to Villa Park in the Champions League, the first time the 23‑year‑old will play competitively on English soil. Not that he will be underprepared. His teammate Douglas Luiz has already briefed him on their forthcoming opponents. “We speak about Aston Villa,” Thuram says. “He told me he had a great time over there, that the fans are great. And I watch a lot of Premier League. It’s going to be a good game.”
But then the younger Thuram has always been something of an attentive student and perhaps this is inevitable when you can call on his kind of footballing education. His father is not just a World Cup winner but one of the leading thinkers in the game; his older brother Marcus, a French international and Serie A champion with Inter. Football in the garden, football chat at the dinner table.
