Fabien Le Floc’h, Media365: published on Monday, May 11, 2026 at 4:04 PM
A year after the end of his career, Steve Mandanda publishes a book titled “Les jours d’après”, which discusses his daily life outside of football and the difficulties he faced.
For a high-level athlete, retirement is often associated with an evocative term: “the little death”. For these individuals, hanging up their cleats, racquets, or spikes to transition to their second life is often very complicated, even a real suffering. This is what Steve Mandanda experienced in the last year. The iconic goalkeeper of OM (2008-2016 and 2017-2022), the former French international (35 caps), announced his retirement last September after a final stint at Stade Rennais.
The months that followed were very tough for the goalkeeper from Le Havre, who chose to talk about the difficulties that followed this decision in a book set to be released on May 13 (“Les jours d’après”, by Flammarion). After hesitating to extend his career at Rennes, which ultimately did not offer him anything, Steve Mandanda then found himself with a daily life without a real purpose, with “days that are endless and empty, void of energy, void of meaning.”
“I do nothing, absolutely nothing”
“It’s not going well. I do nothing, absolutely nothing. (…) I’m unemployed, lying on my couch without even knowing what I’m waiting for, without knowing what I want,” he explains in the pages of his book. With his gloves stored away, Steve Mandanda discovers the daily life of millions of people, including his difficult experience at France Travail.
“This moment confirmed my life change,” he assures in this book co-written with Mathieu Coureau. “I enter the daily life of Mr. and Mrs. everyone. It’s a real shift between my life before and my life after. It was a bit ‘unsettling’ when I was asked what field I was looking for work in and I was bombarded with questions about what’s next.” Now a consultant on Canal+, Steve Mandanda has also started training at the Center for Sports Law and Economics in Limoges, with “the desire to become a club manager,” specifically a “sports director.”
