“He was always a performer. I have really great memories of going on little tournament away trips, staying in the hotel, and he’d be just entertaining everybody. He’d have everyone, from 12-year-old kids to adults, cracking up and laughing.
“He always had a real energy and curiosity that I think really translates well to acting. When you were with him, he was always so fun. You were always laughing so much. I think you can see that still, he’s just a guy who’s got this energy for life that’s infectious.”
Alex Muyl, who plays for Major League soccer club Nashville SC, is regaling The Athletic with his memories of growing up with Timothee Chalamet, the international man of the moment — and a candidate for the Academy Award for Best Actor for his role in Marty Supreme.
But Muyl knew him when he was much younger. Back then, the pair, who both have French fathers, were close childhood friends, spending summers together in France. They were also teammates at the same soccer club in New York, the Manhattan Kickers.
Muyl says he feels proud to see the career trajectory of his friend. His performance in Marty Supreme has already seen him pick up a Golden Globe and Critics’ Choice Award for best actor.
“It’s surreal, which I’m sure it sometimes is for him,” Muyl says during a break from Nashville SC’s preseason camp in Florida. “I think that you can tell from the way he conducts himself and the way that he is, he’s super down-to-earth. He’s just like a regular guy, and I think people really connect with that. It’s been really cool to watch, and it’s fun to follow along as a fan as well.”
Muyl, who was the outstanding player at Manhattan Kickers, met Chalamet when he joined the team aged around 10, and they struck up a friendship straight away, helped by their French heritage. There’s a video that’s circulated online of the pair dancing along to ‘Crank That’ by Soulja Boy.
In an interview with the Theo Von podcast in 2024, Chalamet described Muyl as “just gifted, he’s a foot Mozart. It’s tough, you know, I had to work my a*** off, and if you don’t have the gift of physical talent, of athleticism, you’re cooked.”
Chalamet was a goalkeeper for much of his time at Manhattan Kickers, but also played as a midfielder. He stopped playing for the club at around the age of 14.
“He was always technical, with good feet, and then as a goalkeeper, a good shot stopper, with really good reactions,” Muyl says. “As he still had that technical base, he was able to control the game with his feet.”
“He was a super bubbly and energetic kid with a magnetic personality,” Dorian Wirz, another former Manhattan Kickers teammate, tells The Athletic. “He always knew how to connect with people, whether it was adults or different types of kids on the team. He had a ton of charisma and was really motivated by being in the thick of things. He really fed off energy and wasn’t shy to be front and centre.
“As a player, he was slower to develop physically, but was tricky on the ball and good with his feet. But the goals got bigger before he did, so he moved to playing outfield — left midfield, I think. His dad (Marc) was much more soccer-focused, and his mom (Nicole) was much more acting-focused, so his dad was the one who really took him to games and was invested.”
Chalamet (front, left) regularly played as a goalkeeper (Dorian Wirz)
Asked about his acting career, Wirz adds: “I can’t say I saw this coming, but Timmy was a really savvy operator, knew how to read a room and endear himself to folks. He was a charmer, he definitely had some of that it factor.”
The boys’ coach at the time was Angel Planells, who now lives in Seattle. “I had a very special team of kids with the Manhattan Kickers,” he says to The Athletic. “Timothee was a talented kid, but he was on the small side. He was a great teammate and a fun kid, his parents were very lovely.
“He played goalkeeper, plus midfield. He would play in goal for half a game, then play outfield for the other half of the game, and he didn’t mind it. He would sometimes get lobbed, though, because he wasn’t the tallest.
“When I see him on TV, I tell my children, ‘I coached that kid when he was younger.’ It brings joy to my face because it’s like, ‘I was a part of this kid’s childhood.’ It’s the same with Alex (Muyl), I could tell Alex was going to be special when he was younger.”
As their friendship grew and they bonded over their French roots, Chalamet and Muyl spent two summer vacations playing at the Bernard Bosquier Football Academy summer camp in Cavaillon, about an hour north of Marseille, in the south of France.
In a previous interview with ParisMatch.com, Chalamet spoke about spending his summers as a child in the village of Le Chambon-sur-Lignon, in Haute-Loire, where his paternal grandparents, Roger and Jean, lived. He still visits the village, making a trip, according to the Daily Mail, with his girlfriend Kylie Jenner in summer 2023.
It was through his father Marc, who worked as the New York correspondent for Le Parisien newspaper, that Chalamet developed a lifelong affinity for French side AS Saint-Etienne. Saint-Etienne are a prestigious club who have been crowned champions of France 10 times. They reached the European Cup final in 1976, losing to Bayern Munich, but have fallen on hard times more recently. They are currently third in France’s second-tier league, Ligue 2, hoping to return to the top flight.
Referencing that last month, Chalamet told French magazine Paris Match: “It (2026) has started pretty well, I am very lucky. But for 2026 to be truly perfect, Saint-Etienne will have to be promoted back to Ligue 1 next season.”
In another recent video that was posted online, Chalamet was asked by a fan to sign a Lyon shirt, who have a fierce rivalry with Saint-Etienne in France. Chalamet replied by writing ‘A bas Lyon!’ which translates as ‘down with Lyon!’
Well-known Saint-Étienne fan Timothée Chalamet was handed a jersey of Les Verts’ arch-rivals, Lyon. The actor’s response?
“I’m going to write: ‘Down with Lyon.'”pic.twitter.com/sdcW9wRTXu
— Get French Football News (@GFFN) February 5, 2026
In a separate interview with Nardwuar the Human Serviette last year, Chalamet showed his passion for soccer when he revealed how, when he visited France as a boy, he used to ride after the Saint-Etienne team on his bicycle: “I used to chase the team… Bafetimbi Gomis, Dimitri Payet, it was that generation of Saint-Etienne players. I’m a big Saint-Etienne fan. They’re probably the team I support the most in the world, better than the New York Knicks.”
Gomis, a former France international striker who started his career at Saint-Etienne, tells The Athletic he felt proud when he saw he’d been name-checked by the famous actor: “I was happy, because I was an important member of the Saint-Etienne team. We always tried to understand the value of the club, to give happiness to the people, because Saint-Etienne is an historic club.
“I’m so proud, I haven’t met Timothee yet, but I would like to one day. It surprised me, because it’s very difficult to see the new generation, someone famous, supporting Saint-Etienne.
“Timothee seems proud to support Saint-Etienne. I think the club should work with him, to make something of it, because of his popularity. He can inspire the next generation of Saint-Etienne fans, which is amazing. He is very famous but seems to keep his humility. I really like that.”
There could be a connection between Chalamet’s attitude and the city of the soccer team he supports. Gomis characterises it as “a city where the people fight, they are very humble.”
At the soccer camp Chalamet attended with Muyl, coach Nicolas Bosquier recalled the future actor’s passion for Saint-Etienne.
“Timothee was one of the first American children to attend the academy,” he told The Athletic. “We now welcome around 100 American children every summer out of a total of 800. I remember that he always wore an AS Saint-Etienne jersey.
“He was a very well-mannered boy with perfect French and that slight accent that makes Americans so endearing when they speak French. He was a very good teammate, always ready to help and very, very passionate about soccer. I think that if you ask him, I’m sure his dream at this time was to become a professional soccer player.”
“It was kind of a vacation, but with soccer as the background,” Muyl added. “It was so fun. His French was always better than mine, so he was kind of like translating for me, and we were meeting all these kids. It was a really, really good time.”
Chalamet has been nominated for an Academy Award for his role in Marty Supreme (Kevin Winter/Getty Images)
Those summers spent at soccer camp in France were not the friends’ only overseas trips together.
During their time at Manhattan Kickers, they also took part in matches against teams from Brazil and England. That included a game against a Charlton Athletic youth side featuring Joe Gomez, who now plays for Liverpool, as part of the South London side’s pre-season plans.
A photo of the boys from both teams, including Chalamet and Gomez, was posted on Manhattan Kickers’ social media accounts last year by Evan Rosenthal, president of the club, and went viral.
“Joe’s academy team was a particularly good one,” Dave Chatwin, former lead youth development phase coach at Charlton, tells The Athletic. “So I wouldn’t be surprised if we took them to the sword! It was just one of those really good age groups, where we had a lot of young stars in it.”
That included the likes of Kasey Palmer, who has played for a host of teams in the Championship — the division below the Premier League — Charlie Colkett, who also played professional football in the leagues below the Premier League, and Ryan Huddart, who played for Arsenal Under-23s before becoming a football agent.
“I remember that trip a lot, it was a great trip,” Muyl said. “I remember going there and being like, ‘Oh, this is my chance maybe to go over to an academy in England’. I don’t know if that was ever what the situation was. I remember feeling like I wasn’t standing out in the way that I generally do.
“We were staying in a hotel, and we weren’t with our parents, just kids in the room. There was tea in the room, but I didn’t know it was caffeinated tea. And so at night we would just be drinking this tea with sugar and milk, so I wasn’t sleeping at all, I wasn’t playing my best. I was hardly sleeping more than one hour a night because we were pounding this tea, we were like, ‘It’s so good!’
“I didn’t feel I performed that well, but it was so fun to be in a different place with the guys and to see the level of competition — it was super high.”
At youth football level, that was an elite test for Chalamet, Muyl and Co. Now 30, Chalamet is on the cusp of truly marking his place in the elite of his chosen — and very different — career.