Toulouse. Jef Lettens built his wall with his head
Now happy and confident, Toulouse goalkeeper Jef Lettens is the strong link in an unbeaten Fenix for seven league games.
With 33.1% saves, Jef Lettens has the highest percentage of the five best goalkeepers in the championship. He had never reached such a ratio since his debut in the first division, six years ago at Cesson. “I took a step forward, especially mentally,” said the 31-year-old Belgian international. And if the Fenix Toulouse surfs on a series of seven games without defeat in the league (4 wins and 3 draws), it owes it largely to the “assurance” that the native of Hasselt gives off, where he discovers handball within the most popular club in the country. “I feel more serene. Before, a bad match could spoil the next three for me, this is no longer the case”, he explains without forgetting to associate with his success “the work of his defense”. Disturbed by a false transfer to Nantes, which had signaled him to Cesson the previous year as a player who arrived in Toulouse in the summer of 2019. “He had to be remarried with the goal,” said Antoine Magnard nicely, l coach of the Fenix goalkeepers.
“Someone who invests a lot”
An old story now. Promoted among the locker room executives by Danijel Andjelkovic at the start of the season, in the company of Pierrick Chelle, Maxime Gilbert and Nzmanja Ilic, Lettens has since risen to this new responsibility. “I don’t like to talk about status because I don’t feel above others but I accept the role I have to play,” he says. His performances on the ground have logically accelerated the process and his speaking count, he who no longer hesitates to bang his fist on the table when the collective is not working well. “He is someone who invests himself enormously, both physically and emotionally, a hard worker,” Antoine Magnard said of him. The latter nods by confirming the “mental change” of his foal who could sometimes get lost “in sterile anger against his defense. He now has enough self-confidence to better manage his annoyance.”
Technically very clean, there are still a few working avenues to explore better, like the parades on the ground, but this father of a little girl, who is expecting a boy at the end of the month, has never seemed so strong. Probably because he has never seemed so fulfilled …