“I prefer to watch my opponent in the first minutes. I don’t try to reach the ball and attack immediately. For example, when the ball is on the opposite side, I watch how he positions himself and adapt my movements according to what I see. You have to think a lot during the game. And then analyze the games with game interruptions anyway,” Martin Terrier said over and over. The 25-year-old winger entered adult football strongly, became one of the leaders of the French youth team and moved from Lille to the camp of one of the French giants, Lyon.

FC Lyon. Martin Terrier

At Lyon, his career stalled, with the Terrier never becoming a reinforced concrete player on the weavers’ base. But in 2020, he found the team that the coach trusted him, paying for it with goals and assists, and Rennes is at the forefront of the French championship and claims to make it to the Europa League playoffs. The Terrier also scored against Dynamo in Rennes’ first head-to-head match against Kyiv on French soil, a 2-1 win for the home team.

The first season at Rennes was a grind for Terje and it turned out that matches were postponed due to the coronavirus pandemic. But Martin spent the 2021/2022 season at an extraordinary level – 21 goals and 7 assists in 46 games for the Brittany club. The striker, who was eliminated after two mediocre seasons at Lyon, is among the top three top scorers in Ligue 1, surpassing only Monaco’s Wissam Ben Yedder and PSG’s Kylian Mbappe.

This season, Terje did not slow down and brought the number of effective moves closer to the indicator of games played for Rennes – 7 goals and 3 assists in the club’s 13 matches in all competitions.

Terje’s first steps in football were much more measured. When Martin was 7 years old, his family moved from Bayeul, 25 kilometers from Lille, to the center of the metropolis. Terrier studied at the Lille sports school, signed a professional contract with the club in October 2016 and moved to the first team. He started out as a striker in Lille, but his performance statistics in this position did not shine at all – 1 goal in 11 matches.

Thus, Terje received a seasonal loan in Strasbourg for the 2017/2018 season. The Alsace club, which has just returned to the top division, had a disastrous start to the championship, losing four of their five games, but the appearance of a promising striker gave the team a boost. Terje’s three goals and four assists helped Strasbourg score important points in the battle for survival, but the player could have preferred to forget the second half of the season altogether.

Midfielder Jonas Martin, who played with Terje in Strasbourg at the time, remembers the roller coaster that the young and still fledgling talent had to go through in this campaign. Terje scored his last goal for Strasbourg in December 2017, the striker spent the entire second half of the season on a starvation diet, also missing some games due to groin injuries. On several occasions Marten found his teammate in tears in his club base room – estranged from the others, the Terrier swallowed all the flurry of criticism pouring down on him on Twitter.

“Social media kills the self-confidence of football players. You’re already very disappointed because you didn’t play well. You come home, disgusted, sleep badly and worry about all that – Marten spent time on the internet and it had a bad effect on him,” says his former teammate.

Still, a significant event took place in the French talent’s professional career at that time. He was spotted by Bruno Genesio, who was coaching Lyon at the time. Lille and Lyon shook hands on January 26, 2018, and Terrier’s transfer fee was 11 million euros. And no matter how his life develops in the future, first in Strasbourg, where he was on loan until the end of the season, and then at Parc Olympique Lyon, the football player found his coach, who later managed to bring out his best qualities. .

Although one of the moments in an unfinished playing career at Lyon nearly put an end to the Terrier’s football passions. On January 25, 2020, at the 20th minute of the Ligue 1 Lyon – Toulouse match, the Weavers player fainted right on the court. Doctors rushed to the field to help the football player, and eventually Marten was taken to a stretcher. Then it turned out that his blood pressure dropped sharply. It was an unpleasant event, but Terje managed to survive thanks, among other things, to the psychological support of people nearby.

“A trusting relationship has developed with the coach since our days at Lyon. The secret is to give me more freedom on the pitch. And I needed that,” Terje explains. or I can play like ten or dig deeper to get the ball. I scan for areas where I can be useful and the coach lets me do that.

This is the uniqueness of Terje’s gaming qualities as an already emerged player. The striker’s clever and unconventional movement without the ball allows him to find areas to develop attacks, but what gives him the most joy is scoring goals. And in such situations, Marten’s main trump card is the speed of the strokes and his perfected technique. In the 23rd minute of the match against Dynamo, Terje showed his above offensive skills to the fullest: He got into a shock position and hit the net in the far upper corner of the Kyiv team’s goal. It was as if he made a three-pointer from the back of the arc, which the striker implied with a characteristic move and celebrated a goal.

Dear Terje for the team and in the defense game. Last season, the Rennes offensive player averaged 2.43 balls per game in the counterpressure phase. Besides his speed, Terje is most effective at putting pressure with his opponent’s back facing him, considering his options for moving the ball.

Like a fish in water, the Terrier feels with the ball in tight spaces, but that’s not surprising for a product of the French football school. If we compare it with Dynamo, the main star of the current roster of the Kyiv club, Viktor Tsygankov, immediately comes to mind, but Terje is a mirror image of him in position and is now a much more advanced version of him in terms of playing characteristics. In fact, Rennes’ star player is a versatile offensive player who benefits his team and earns points for his club with his moves in almost every match.

They’ve already called him the “new Henry” since the move to Rennes in France and performances led by the Genesio Terrier. All thanks to his graceful movement with the ball, his ability to pass at opponents’ speed, and his ability to hit the far post.

“This is a very flattering comparison. Henry is one of the best strikers in France. I am still far from him, but I am inspired by the best,” Terje smiles. adds.

FC Rennes. Martin Terrier

Currently with 7 points, Rennes shares the title with Turkish Fenerbahce in Group B to advance to the next stage in the Europa League. It is difficult to overstate Terje’s contribution to these results – a goal + a pass in the draw against the Turks and a goal against Denis Boyko. And the Frenchman, who has had such an impact on the Red-Blacks’ play in European competition, despite the game’s upswing in recent seasons, certainly won’t stay long at a club that specializes in nurturing and selling the stars, and it’s not about keeping and selling them. fighting for higher goals.

But first, the Dynamo defense will need to figure out how to keep their targets covered and prevent Terje from raising the transfer price for Europe’s top clubs.