Mathieu Bodmer has praised the long-term project being led by Kylian Mbappe’s family at Caen, highlighting a decision by the Real Madrid forward’s mother, Fayza Lamari, to prohibit mobile phones inside the club’s training centre.
Bodmer, who has returned to his former club after leaving Le Havre, has been appointed Caen’s new sporting director. According to French broadcaster RMC, his priority is to help the club return to Ligue 2 while establishing a sustainable structure that links the academy with the first team.
The project presented to Bodmer by Caen president Ziad Hammoud and Lamari was among the main reasons he agreed to come back to the club.
“Their project with the young players is important to me,” Bodmer said. “If you saw what has been put in place for education, accommodation and nutrition… Fayza [Lamari] banned mobile phones at the training centre, and that is a wonderful decision. The young players talk and live together.”
Bodmer said the policy was one of the details that particularly impressed him, as the club seeks to create an environment in which its young players spend more time communicating and sharing their daily lives away from their screens.
He has not yet met Kylian Mbappe since taking up his new role but hopes to speak to him and acknowledge the financial support that helped launch the project.
“I would love to say to Kylian: listen, do not worry about us, we will get the job done. Thank you for the money you put in at the beginning. We will try to give the club back to you in the cleanest possible image,” Bodmer said.
Caen will begin their French third-tier campaign next Friday, when they host Valenciennes in their opening match of the season. The team is managed by former France international Gael Clichy.
Mbappe and his family acquired around 80% of Caen’s shares through their private investment fund in the summer of 2024. Their involvement has placed the club’s academy and its wider development model at the centre of the project.
Bodmer’s return forms part of the club’s ambition to build over the long term rather than focus only on immediate results. The stated aim is to restore Caen to Ligue 2, with the foundations of that challenge beginning in the training centre and extending through to the senior side.
The sporting director’s comments underline the importance being placed on the club’s young players, with education, accommodation and nutrition presented as key parts of the plan alongside football. The ban on mobile phones, he suggested, is intended to encourage greater interaction among the players as they develop within the academy.
