Steve Mandanda honoured with the 2026 Autobiography Award for " Les Jours d'Après "

SPORTEL Awards has announced that Steve Mandanda is the recipient of the 2026 Autobiography Award for Les jours d'après, published by Flammarion in May 2026.

A major figure in French football, former goalkeeper for Olympique de Marseille, Stade Rennais and the French national team, and a 2018 FIFA World Cup winner, Steve Mandanda delivers in Les jours d'après a deeply personal and authentic account of a rarely explored stage in the life of elite athletes: the moment when a career comes to an end and a new life begins.

A unique insight into life after professional sport

After twenty-five years at the highest level, Steve Mandanda officially brought his professional football career to an end on 10 September 2025, aged 40.

Nicknamed "El Phenomeno" by supporters at the Vélodrome, he left his mark on the history of Olympique de Marseille, where he spent fourteen seasons. Following a spell at Crystal Palace, he concluded his career at Stade Rennais. With the French national team, he earned 35 caps between 2008 and 2022 and was part of the squad that won the 2018 FIFA World Cup.

Yet in Les jours d'après, Steve Mandanda chooses not to focus solely on the defining moments of an exceptional career. Instead, he explores what happens when everything suddenly comes to an end.

Through a personal journal kept since announcing his retirement, he speaks candidly about his doubts, his sense of emptiness, the loss of familiar reference points and a period he describes as "a kind of symbolic death for the athlete". It is a period of transition during which the former champion gradually has to reinvent his daily life, his relationship with sport and, more broadly, his sense of identity.
Encounters, new routines, physical activity, emerging projects, dressing-room memories and key moments from his career come together in a narrative that reaches beyond football to explore a universal question: how do you rebuild your life when the existence that has shaped you for so long comes to an end?

Through its honesty and depth, Les jours d'après offers a rare insight into the man behind the champion, while reflecting on the transition that accompanies the end of a career at the top of the professional game.

"With Les jours d'après, Steve Mandanda gives us far more than the story of an outstanding career. He opens the door to an intimate experience that is often silent and rarely explored: the moment when an athlete must learn to reinvent themselves after devoting their entire life to competition. This honesty, this strength and this ability to transform a personal experience into a universal story perfectly embody the spirit of the SPORTEL Awards Autobiography Award," says Marine Picoulet, Executive Director of SPORTEL Awards.

Joining the ranks of sporting greats

Through the Autobiography Award, SPORTEL Awards celebrates a book that fully reflects the purpose of this distinction: to highlight the personal stories of those who have shaped sporting history and, through their own words, offer a different perspective on their careers and experiences.

Over the years, the Autobiography Award has recognised sporting greats including Mike Tyson (2014), Dan Carter (2016), Bixente Lizarazu (2018), Peter Schmeichel (2021), Dominique Rocheteau (2024) and Marie-José Pérec (2025).

Joining these celebrated names, Steve Mandanda now becomes part of this prestigious roll of honour with a book that goes beyond the story of a career to explore an intimate and universal experience: the transition from a life entirely devoted to competition to a life that must be reinvented.

SPORTEL Awards 2026 will honour Steve Mandanda and present him with the Autobiography Award on Monday 19 October 2026 at the Grimaldi Forum Monaco.