The Arsenal midfielder Mathieu Flamini is on his way to being (most likely) the richest ex-footballer in the world when he retires from football as his half-owned company GF Biochemicals goes from strength to strength in the world market, and is now in fact the world’s largest producer of an oil replacement product called levulinic acid, which is set to revolutionize the worlds dependency on oil taken from wells.
But at the moment he is still desperate to continue his playing career and is looking at options of where he could play next season having finished his contract at Arsenal. “Business is something I developed on the side of football and will probably be in my life after football. But today I am a football player and I dream about football and I eat football every day,” Flamini said. After a long and successful career at Arsenal (twice) and AC Milan he will certainly have enough offers to carry on playing for a few years yet albeit at a lower level.
It was while he was in Milan that he met Pasquale Granata and came up with his business idea. As he explained to the Financial Times: “[Granata and I] were both very concerned by climate change and we wanted to do something about it,so we started meeting scientists at the Polytechnic University of Milan and started research to develop that technology.”
“When I think about when we started the company, and now see that we have also offices in Holland, America … all of that for me is adrenalin,”
“It is stimulation [that] has pushed me to keep going and to move forward.”
“I took a lot of risk when I started my football career, but I believe there is no successful story if at one point you didn’t take any risk,”
“Arsene is a kind of mentor for me. He is someone who will always keep his calm, and I have learnt from him never to take a decision in the heat of the moment.”
Wenger has certainly needed all of his calm this season, despite finishing in our highest position for 12 years! But he must be proud of his prodigy Flamini, who has copied his formula for getting rich and successful, and also honouring every contract right until the last day….
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