“Kembinho” wants to continue improving

Announced since years as a star in the making, Jirès Kembo finally seems to have blossomed into the sort of player many were despairing to see him turn into. With a bit more luck, his breakthrough could have happened a year earlier, when the rushed departures of Ismaël Bangoura and Asamoah Gyan had opened a blatant gap for him to fit into.
Alas, in December 2010 and in a game between Bordeaux and Rennes remembered for all the bad reasons, his season suddenly turned into months of pain. Falling badly after a big challenge by Sané, he was forced out of the pitch, injured. The beginning of the nightmare for Kembo, who would never manage to return to his best in this 2010-2011 season because of a slow-recovering hamstring injury. “It should have been my year, but I didn’t even play for half a season”, he regretted in an interview to L’Équipe last Friday.

After weeks of visible improvement in autumn, this season plagued with injuries came to reinforce his reputation as a player capable of grand gestures and unexpected tricks, but mostly suffering of his inconsistency and his inability to turn his occasional brilliance into permanent class.
This is the whole Kembo paradox: an immense raw talent that one can hardly ignore, but recurrent difficulties to fully express it. Since the beginning of his career, occasional flashes of brilliance have been witnessed, enough of them in fact to make for impressive YouTube compilations. His dribbling and his pace are completed by a very good shooting technique, which allows him to find the target regularly, whether it is with subtle curled shots or violent hits from the instep. In autumn 2010, before everything went wrong at the Stade Chaban Delmas, his goals scored against Lyon – a right footed blast past Lloris after nutmegging Cris in the penalty area – and against Brest – a left footed curler from range leaving Elana without a chance – were textbook illustrations of his ability.

Atypical journey and slow maturation

Two these qualities expressed on the pitch, Kembo adds another, less visible: patience. When comparing his journey to those of the numerous players trained at the Stade Rennes academy, his evolution his particularly atypical.
Paradoxically, his career started in spectacular fashion. Exceptionally convincing with the club’s youth teams, he was soon an essential member of the Reserve, in the CFA division, before receiving his first professional contract in 2006, aged only 18. Soon, he would debut in Ligue 1, alongside players two years older than him (including Sylvain Marveaux). Five seasons later, Kembo seems to have been there forever. It would be easy to forget that at 23 he is only one year older than Kana-Biyik, Doumbia or Théophile-Catherine.

This may be why his maturation at the highest level seems slow, especially since his progression was often limited by the fierce competition in the attacking sector. As an element of comparison, Kembo started with the first team a few months before Romain Danzé. Today, the man from Douarnenez, who needed a few seasons before becoming permanent fixture in the Breton team, has 70 more Ligue 1 starts more than Kembo to his name. A major gap, which sums up pretty well the role of super-sub that was Kembo’s for years.

Loyalty

However, the French-Congolese could have earned some playing time elsewhere, enjoy a loan in Ligue 2 as his mate Moussa Sow did, but the Rennes management always refuse to let him go, even temporarily. Despite this, the youngster decided to opt for patience rather than exile. At the end of the 2009-2010 season, he could have decided to leave, reaching the end of his contract at the same time as Sow. Instead, and against all odds, Kembo decided to sign another three-year contract and to wait for his opportunity. “Stade Rennes is a club I love, which allowed me to play in Ligue 1, to fulfil my dream, he explained at the time. I extended my contract by pride, since I don’t want to be another name on a list of former players. I want to leave a mark here, and I really want to impose myself in the first team, since the club has always rewarded me with confidence».

A year and a half later, Stade Rennes is starting to pick the fruits of this confidence, and Kembo the reward for his patience. Showing more mature in his play, growing in confidence thanks to a largely increased playing time, he also benefits of the benevolence of Frédéric Antonetti and his staff. The complicity was obvious when the player ran across the pitch to hug his manager after his goal against Valenciennes, after Antonetti came out of a difficult couple of days.
For sure, everything isn’t perfect. After several chances “wasted” in Udine, the player has faced some strong criticism. Since then however, Kembo had put himself back in the right direction and proved to be one of the main attacking weapons of the “Rouge et Noir”. The best Rennes goal scorer in Ligue 1 at this date (six goals), he is trying to grab the limelight, even though he can’t hide his satisfaction. “My goals are capping a lot of team-work that you can’t always see, he moderated modestly when talking to Le Parisien last Friday. Today, I really want to give the best of my ability and have as much fun as I can have. And scoring goals is an important part of the fun”.

«To manage a full season»

Despite his positioning on the wings, Kembo is the most efficient forward in Ligue 1 since the beginning of the season, with a goal every 96 minutes in average. A level of efficiency which is also a good indicator of the way Rennes organise their attacking play, with the wingers barely ever running down the by-line and preferring to cut inside to support their centre-forward or score by themselves.
Naturally, the possibility of seeing this good period falter is real. It reminds us that the player’s blossoming needs to be achieved on the long-term, which Kembo always failed to accomplish to this day. Perfectly aware of this, the player is wisely conditioning his international future to his long-term success with the Stade Rennais. Fervently courted by the Democratic Republic of Congo, he tempered the situation in an interview given to Le Parisien: “to hear that there is an interest for me is something I’m proud of. But I think about Rennes first, because I missed a lot of games last season. I want to play as much as I can with my team and I want to finally manage a full season”, he explained.
A full season which will be conditioned to the absence of injuries, a danger ever-present, which got him alerted once again a month ago at the Stade de l’Abbé-Deschamps. A full season will also require consistency, for a player who has always seen his lack of endurance balance his outstanding “explosiveness”. A default which often forces his manager to replace him around the hour mark, absolutely exhausted by his runs forwards and the defensive work he is requested to put in.

But Stade Rennes can cope with this little flaw, seeing what their player is able to do on the pitch. “I have great expectations for him, he is able to do extraordinary things”, Antonetti recognised in L’Équipe recently. His unpredictability was even the source of his very special nickname at Rennes’ Academy, in comparison with the artists of the Brazilian Seleção: “Kembinho".

- Photo : srfc.frenchwill.fr