When Christian Karembeu signed a contract with Olympiacos FC in 2001, many people couldn’t believe that a world champion—especially one who had earned that title at the most recent World Cup—would actually come to Greece to play.
After all, born in New Caledonia on 3 December 1970, Karembeu had already carved out a huge career for himself before winning the 1998 World Cup. He had worn some top-class jerseys since winning the French championship with Nantes in 1995. He had won two Champions Leagues with Real Madrid. And in 2000, just a year before he joined Olympiacos, he had won the Euro. But the team from Piraeus had also had its fair share of triumphs—and would continue to do so, as Karembeu would add two Greek championships (2002 and 2003) to his trophy cabinet as a player in the port city. He remains crucial to Olympiacos today as the Club’s strategic advisor and envoy (he is also a member of the Monaco-based «Champions for Peace” club).
Of course, Christian Karembeu, who is rightly considered one of the most important defensive halfbacks to have ever played for Olympiacos, didn’t just wave a magic wand and have all this bestowed on him. No, he earned his fame through hard work, sacrifice and a difficult childhood marked by poverty and by fear, due to the political unrest that continues to rock his homeland (two members of Karembeu’s family recently lost their lives on the troubled islands). That Karembeu’s father, a teacher at the Evangelical Church’s Scholar Alliance school in New Caledonia, struggling to raise his 18 children in harsh conditions, encouraged Christian in the field of sports when he became aware of his son’s talent for football, clearly played a huge role in Karembeu’s subsequent career.
Raised in the Protestant faith, the young Christian shared a passion for football with his father, who would serve as his first manager. In his pre-teen years at Nouméa High School, Christian immediately stood out in gym class and especially in football. Having won medals in various inter-school competitions, he went on to join FC Gaïtcha FCN, the Nouméa club. With the support of his father and coach (and despite his mother’s reluctance to let him go), Karembeu opted to move to France in 1988. Having passed the requisite tests at «La Jonelière», Nantes’ training center, he joined his first French club, FC Nantes, where his skills were appreciated and put to good use. Karembeu played for Nantes from 1992 to 1995, the year his team won the French league title. After Nantes, he joined the Italian club Sampdoria, before arriving at Real Madrid in 1997, where he also excelled.
His attitude on the field was always that of a player who inspires trust, making you believe that everything will turn out fine
Sunrise in Piraeus…
After winning the World Cup and the Euro, Karembeu spent a single, somewhat indifferent season at Middlesbrough FC in the English Premier Division (2000- 2001). This was the last club he played for before coming to Greece, where he settled for three years. In fact, an urban myth would have it that, when Karembeu transferred to the Piraeus team, Takis Lemonis, the Olympiacos coach at the time, apologized to him for the state of the training ground. The French international replied that, back in New Caledonia, he’d played barefoot. Karembeu was soon an integral member of the Piraeus team, with a positive, «everything’s going to be alright» attitude that inspired fans and team mates alike. Little to no fancy football, but absolutely solid, decisive and sure.
With his cerebral, cool temperament and Giovanni, Djordjević and Alexandris at his side, the defensive midfielder quietly added quality to Olympiacos’ games. His calm demeanor on and off the field and his cultured, modest ways would become his trademark. His quiet and unassuming nature was evident from the very start, after the first goal he scored in an Olympiacos jersey, against Kalamata in 2008. Olympiacos went on to win the game 10-0, but Karembeu said in an interview he gave TO VIMA that «In my life, I have learned not to underestimate any game or any opponent. For me, before it began, the game against Kalamata was as difficult as the one against Manchester United. No match is easy if you don’t play, if you don’t perform. Above all else, it’s your performance that counts».
In Toumba
On only one occasion, a match between Olympiacos and PAOK in 2003, did Karembeu lose his cool, having been at the receiving end of racist insults, and get sent off. The image he presented there is not in keeping with his trademark cool profile, but can ultimately be justified as the instinctive reaction of a man who has dedicated his life to the fight against racism.
Many years later, Karembeu would get to experience one of the most glorious victories in the team’s history—winning the Europa Conference League in 2024 in the final against Fiorentina—in an Olympiacos jersey. A magnificent achievement for Olympiacos, the first club to ever bring a European trophy back to Greece.
Although he liked to keep a low profile, Christian Karembeu was a shining star both on and off the pitch. Nonetheless, his face did grace a number of front pages in the Press with his first wife, the Slovakian actress and model Adriana Sklenařiková, to whom he was married from 1998 to 2011. Several years after they separated, Karembeu married for a second time. And having tied the knot with Jackie Chamoun in 2017, he is now the proud father of two children.
Today the French star continues to serve Olympiacos as its Strategic advisor and ambassador, and he’s very much the right man in the right job. Here with Club President Evangelos Marinakis.
Coaches and… directors
«Like film directors, coaches give instructions, strategize, plan their moves. And just as a director can help an actor achieve a great performance, so a coach can help an athlete to give his best», Karembeu told VIMAgazino in the context of the 24th Francophone Film Festival staged last spring in Athens (Karembeu, who was an avid cinephile from a young age—he once said he would never forget the experience of watching «Amadeus»—was a member of the jury at the festival). But the most important part of Karembeu’s answer, which confirms his value on the pitch as well as the general philosophy he brings to his role as Olympiacos’ strategic advisor and ambassador, came later: «What we need to remember, as actors and athletes, is that we are there, on the football pitch or the movie set, to move the audience who are watching a show. Whether it’s a movie or a game. Which is why we must always respect the viewers, and give them our best.»
