The Shadow Man of the Dressing Room: 180,300 Euros, 'Momo' and France's Broken Trust

On 2 June 2026, at Clairefontaine. French President Emmanuel Macron had arrived at the national team's training base for the official squad photograph. From the crowd, Kylian Mbappé raised a hand and called over a man who never plays a minute, never sits on the coaching bench, a man whose job title makes ordinary fans squint. Yet nobody found it strange that he stood in the presidential frame. His name is Mohamed Sanhadji. In the dressing room, they simply call him 'Momo'.

Three months later, on 16 September 2026, that same man was placed under judicial supervision. The charge sheet is long — misappropriation of public funds, active and passive corruption, influence peddling, fraud, and money laundering tied to tax evasion. Bail was set at 80,000 euros. The conditions: no contact with any current or former player, coach or federation official; no entry to Clairefontaine, the Stade de France or the Parc des Princes without a judge's permission; and a ban on any professional sporting activity. He still enjoys the presumption of innocence.

The investigation published by the French daily L'Équipe is the story of a shadow man of the dressing room. Money sits at its centre, but trust is its soul — the same trust that, for more than two decades, kept the stars' closest presence near, and now threatens to destroy him.

I learned the rhythm of a locker room before I learned the rhythm of a keyboard. In 2026, at sixty, I left twenty-eight years of Rajshahi print deadlines for a Dhaka digital outlet's offer — to embed with Abahani Limited Dhaka across an entire Bangladesh Premier League season. Twenty-two league matches, forty-one training sessions. Which defender prays before kick-off, which striker refuses to eat before noon — I memorised all of it. But the biggest lesson was different: the real power of a dressing room sits with its least-discussed men. The guards, the masseurs, the drivers — the ones nobody writes down, the ones who know the most. In the Sanhadji case, I am looking at exactly that man.

Sanhadji joined the federation in 2026 as a police officer. For more than two decades he was head of security for the French national team. On paper the post is administrative; in practice it is the key to the innermost circle of the dressing room. Who switches off their phone, who cannot leave the room after a defeat, what is happening inside a family — this information never reaches a coach. It reaches the man who walks silently down the hotel corridor beside the players.

The players loved him. L'Équipe reports that for the 2026 World Cup in America, the players themselves insisted he travel with the squad, and that Zinedine Zidane pushed to keep him within his new federation staff. That recognition is rare for a security officer. In football, power never lives only in the boardroom; it lives in the hands of the man a star allows to hold his child.

But the question rises here. Did the dressing room's 'family' model leave Sanhadji exposed, or did Sanhadji use that model?

According to L'Équipe, the story begins in June 2026. After the Qatar World Cup, Mbappé decided to distribute part of his World Cup bonus to the security team that had protected the national side. Four officers received 30,000 euros each. Sanhadji received 60,300 euros. Those close to Mbappé insist this was gratitude, with no condition of return. No charge has been brought against the player.

Then came the loan. Mbappé lent Sanhadji 120,000 euros as part of a deal to buy a house. The money travelled through Mbappé's mother and agent, Fayza Lamari. Combined with the earlier 60,300 euros from the World Cup, the total Mbappé provided him reached 180,300 euros.

The picture is much larger. L'Équipe reports that Sanhadji asked around fifteen current and former players for money and obtained 215,000 euros in loans. Raphaël Varane, Sabri Lamouchi and Laurent Blanc each lent 20,000 euros; Yann M'Vila lent 15,000; Matteo Guendouzi lent 7,500. Mbappé's sum alone represents more than half of that total. L'Équipe confirms Sanhadji received more than 300,000 euros between 2026 and 2026, excluding holidays and benefits in kind.

In the summer of 2026, the French financial intelligence unit Tracfin flagged those transactions. The Paris prosecutor's office then opened a preliminary investigation into three suspicions: money laundering, tax evasion and undeclared work. The central question is simple: were these payments genuine donations, or disguised wages in exchange for private protection services?

Suspicion deepened when investigators noted private trips between Sanhadji and Mbappé outside his official duties. One was a trip to Cameroon in July 2026, days after he received the 60,300 euros. A private journey with a world-famous star, outside official duty, mattered to investigators because it suggested the relationship had crossed professional lines.

Secrecy ran through every request. On 25 October 2026, Sanhadji wrote to Guendouzi, in messages seen by L'Équipe: 'If this matter comes to light, it will be the end of me.' That single line holds the psychology of the whole affair — the man who had been the players' protector for two decades knew that what he was doing could not be protected.

Administrative consequences came first. On 19 December 2026, the National Police Directorate informed him of his early retirement after an investigation by the General Inspectorate, which criticised him for failing to tell his superiors about the cheque he had received from Mbappé. Despite all that, the French Federation signed him directly until July 2026, and he accompanied the national team at the World Cup.

Here the outside reading goes wrong. Most outlets are framing this as a 'Mbappé scandal' — star player, huge sums, trusted employee. But no charge has been brought against Mbappé, and those close to him say it was gratitude. The man charged is not a player. So those placing Mbappé at the centre of the story are avoiding the real question.

The real story sits elsewhere. In modern football management, the 'family' built around players — security staff, masseurs, drivers, personal assistants — has no clear financial structure. The federation pays their salaries, but their trust is earned from the players. Sanhadji reached the top of that trust over two decades. So when he asked for money, the players could not say no — because 'no' meant a broken relationship, and a broken relationship means losing your own safety inside the dressing room.

My old suspicion about agents grows louder here. On the Mbappé side, the money travelled through his mother and agent, Fayza Lamari. When a player's personal money and professional money flow through the same person, no outside mechanism remains to test transparency. A transfer is not a transaction; it is a rumour that learned to walk — and here that rumour had taken up residence inside the dressing room. Agents are football's most invisible cost; this case is clear proof.

One more thing stands out. Sanhadji asked around fifteen people for money — former stars, current stars, all of them. Some names, like Laurent Blanc or Sabri Lamouchi, belong to different generations. That means the problem is not one player's weakness; it is a structural gap in the entire French star culture. When the same man can ask stars of multiple generations equally, the system is bigger than the individual.

In Dhaka, the blue and white taught me that loyalty has a pulse. Over the past few days I compared reactions from French and Bangladeshi supporters on social media — the same question appeared in both places. One Dhaka supporter wrote: 'If a star gives money to a guard, is that love or investment?' A French supporter wrote: 'We never see inside the dressing room, we only see results.' Read together, the two comments reveal that ordinary fans never even knew the post of head of security existed. And that ignorance kept the arrangement alive for two decades.

The same pattern is easy to recognise in my own country. In Dhaka's football, too, there are 'Momos' inside dressing rooms — small titles on paper, large influence in practice. When the Bangladesh Premier League went silent, I heard every empty seat speak — and in that silence it became clear that nobody checks what happens to the invisible people around the players. Europe's star economy and Dhaka's struggling league — the same gap in both, only the figures differ.

The biggest lesson of this case is not in Mbappé's money or Sanhadji's bail. The lesson is that when football turns a player into a brand, the 'invisible people' around him become financial actors too. If federations do not formalise these roles into auditable structures, the next 'Momo' will arrive by exactly this road. The French Federation has now joined the case as a civil party — but becoming a civil party and building a system are not the same thing.

The best stories are not in the press conference; they are in the hallway after. Mohamed Sanhadji walked that hallway for two decades. Now only one question remains — can the trust of a dressing room ever be written into a contract? The answer is not for France alone; it waits from the fields of Rajshahi to the stands of Buenos Aires, for every football culture. And the first condition of that answer is this: before you call a man 'Momo', write his role down on paper.