Les Ulis is a working class new town that was built not far from Paris in the late 1970’s. It has produced such luminaries as Thierry Henry and Patrice Evra, but was starting to look and feel a bit run down by the mid-1990’s. That’s when a couple of Guadeloupean origin welcomed a young boy into the world who they named Anthony Jordan Martial. He grew up in the tower blocks of the Bergères quarter and spent his early years playing football in the streets and local parks with his brothers and friends.
Naturally, Anthony Martial joined the local club, CO Les Ulis, when he turned six and he spent eight years in their ranks before scouts from Olympique Lyonnais convinced him to move south and join their renowned youth setup. By then his older brother Johan was already a professional footballer with SC Bastia in Corsica and the prodigious young Anthony was hotly tipped to follow in his footsteps.
In August 2012, aged just sixteen and nine months, he signed his first professional contract and integrated the first team squad at Lyon, having already been a regular member of the France U-16 and U-17 squads over the previous two seasons. The following month, he scored on his debut for the France U-18 team in a 4-1 friendly win against Austria.
A short-lived career at Lyon
Erstwhile Lyon manager Rémi Garde made Anthony Martial wait until December for his club debut in a Europa League match against Israeli outfit Kiryat Shmona at the Stade de Gerland. Lyon had already wrapped up first place in the group ahead of this final fixture, so Garde rotated the line-up and rested most of the first team regulars. Martial was named among the substitutes and he got his chance to come off the bench after eighty minutes. Wearing the number 50 shirt, he replaced Yassine Benzia, whose goal had made it 2-0 to Lyon. Martial led the line for the final ten minutes but couldn’t add to the score as it finished 2-0 to Les Gones.
On the 3rd of February 2013, Martial was brought back into the matchday squad by Garde for a trip to Ajaccio. Lyon were trailing 2-1 at the Stade Michel-Moretti when Martial was summoned from the bench to replace Rachid Ghezzal with eleven minutes remaining, Unfortunately his Ligue 1 debut didn’t precipitate a comeback. A late Adrian Mutu penalty made it 3-1 to Ajaccio and Martial picked up the first booking of his career in stoppage time.
He wasn’t called upon again until a trip to Montpellier in mid-April where he came on for Steed Malbranque in the 68th minute with the match poised at 1-1. This time he did contribute to a Lyon victory thanks to Clement Grenier’s injury time winner. The following month, Martial made his fourth and final Lyon appearance in the penultimate home game of the season against Paris-Saint Germain. PSG were leading 1-0 courtesy of a Jeremy Menez strike when Martial was brought on to replace Benzia in the 76th minute. Try as he might, he couldn’t help Lyon muster an equaliser and they ended up losing 1-0 to Carlo Ancelotti’s PSG, who were confirmed as Ligue 1 champions that evening.
Surprise Sale to Monaco
Anthony Martial was now a regular goalscorer for the French U-18 team and rated as one of the hottest prospects in French football. Lyon supporters were rightly excited about his potential but in July 2013 the seventeen-year-old was surprisingly sold to AS Monaco for €5 million. Club president Jean-Michel Aulas declared that the club urgently needed the transfer income. Therefore, Martial’s career with Lyon amounted to a total of just 57 minutes across four matches, with no goals or assists.
That summer, Martial represented France in the UEFA U-19 Championships in Lithuania, where they made it all the way to the final. Starting on the left side of attack, alongside his now former Lyon team mate Benzia, they faced Serbia in the title decider, but the French forwards drew a blank in a 1-0 defeat. Despite that disappointment, Martial was included in the “team of the tournament” selected by the UEFA technical team.
During his first season at Monaco, Martial was used sparingly by coach Claudio Ranieri, but he really made an impression in the following campaign under Leonardo Jardim. He made 48 appearances across all competitions in 2014-15 and finished as the club’s top scorer, with 12 goals, ahead of the likes of Bernardo Silva and Dimitar Berbatov.
Multi-Million Pound Move to Manchester
By now Anthony Martial was rated as one of the top young talents in Europe, and Manchester United moved to take him to Old Trafford in September 2015. The fee of £36 million plus a potential £21.6 million of add-ons made him the most expensive teenager in history at the time, and he’s still in the top ten of that list ten years on.
Martial would spend a total of nine years at Manchester United, playing under Louis Van Gaal, José Mourinho, Ole Gunnar Solskjær, Ralf Rangnick and Erik ten Hag. He got off to a quick start, scoring four goals in his first four games and won the Premier League Player of the Month award for September 2015. He also picked up the ‘Golden Boy’ award, which is given to Europe’s best U-21 player as decided by a panel of sports journalists.
The first five seasons of his United career were by far his most productive. He reached double figures for goals in all but one of them, and won the FA Cup, Community Shield, League Cup and UEFA Europa League. Unfortunately he wasn’t able to recapture that form in the later stages of his time at United, when he was increasingly plagued by a series of injuries that restricted his availability. He only managed a total of nineteen goals across those final four seasons.
A loan spell at Sevilla in the second half of the 2021-22 campaign, during which he only managed one goal in twelve appearances, failed to rekindle his career, and United allowed his contract to run down to its expiry in summer 2024. He left United with a very respectable 90 goals in 317 appearances to his name, across all competitions.
After a couple of months without a club, he eventually signed for AEK Athens in the Greek Super League for the 2024-25 season. Still only 29, he’s finally started to rediscover a bit of form and consistency playing on the left side of their attack and has scored nine goals in twenty-two appearances by mid-April as AEK sit third in the championship play-off table at the time of writing.
Thirty French Caps
Having scored four goals in twelve appearances for the France U-21s, Martial’s senior national team career began in September 2015 when coach Didier Deschamps included him in the squad for friendlies against Portugal and Serbia. He made his debut at the Estádio José Alvalade as a substitute for Karim Benzema in a 1-0 win over the Portuguese.
The following summer, he was included in the squad for Euro 2016, hosted in France, and made three appearances in the tournament, including a cameo in the final against Portugal at the Stade de France. He came off the bench to replace Moussa Sissoko for the last ten minutes of extra time, just after Éder had scored what turned out to be the winner for Portugal.
Martial was in and out of the France squad over the following few years, making a total of 30 appearances for Les Bleus, including sixteen starts and scoring two goals. His most recent appearances to date came in the 2021 UEFA Nations League group stage where he scored against Ukraine. He was in the squad for the finals and collected a winners’ medal, despite remaining on the bench during the final against Spain.