From cat-gate to captain: Kurt Zouma's middle name is 'Happy'

Training has finished at West Ham’s base in Rush Green, Romford and Kurt Zouma, with a smile befitting a man whose middle name is Happy, is walking towards the prayer room.

Nayef Aguerd and Said Benrahma, the club’s other two first-team players of Muslim faith, are with him. They are no longer in their filthy training gear. They have performed the purification ritual known as Wudu in preparation for their appointment with the Almighty.

They kneel towards the Qibla, the direction of Mecca, and begin to pray. Footballers may spend their lives in the public domain, but this is Zouma’s private moment between him and his maker. Fifteen minutes later, he leaves that room feeling closer to God.

A man of faith, the 28-year-old Frenchman does this five times a day, and you will also find him praying before every appearance for West Ham. He prays for protection from injury. He prays for a good game. He prays for the safety and enjoyment of everybody inside the stadium – even those who refuse to let him escape his controversies of the past.

That, of course, refers to February 7, 2022 – the day footage emerged showing him kicking and slapping his pet cat, filmed by his younger brother, Yoan.

I attended David Moyes’ first press conference in the aftermath. West Ham’s manager fielded no fewer than 20 questions about Zouma, including why he planned to continue playing him. ‘I know exactly where my moral compass is,’ Moyes said. ‘It’s not for you to be the judge. It’s for the law to be the judge.’

The law, in this case Thames Magistrates’ Court, sentenced Zouma to 180 hours of community service while he was also banned from keeping cats for five years and ordered to cover the RSPCA’s £8,887.03 legal costs.

Neither the Ministry of Justice nor those who know Zouma will say if his community service included the traditional punishment of scrubbing graffiti from the streets of London. They will only divulge that he has completed his 180 hours and it took a physical toll as he juggled training in the morning with ‘payback’ shifts in the evening.

West Ham fined Zouma two weeks’ wages worth £250,000, all of which has since been donated to nine different animal welfare charities, although the RSPCA were not one of the recipients.

Adidas dropped him as their ambassador – he has since signed as a TRU athlete – and companies such as Experience Kissimmee stopped sponsoring the club, albeit fans were quick to call them hypocrites for flogging SeaWorld tickets on their website.

Zouma said sorry to his teammates. They accepted his apology and so did Moyes, sensing he was genuinely remorseful. His teammates were as shocked as anyone. Zouma, their gentle 6ft 3in giant, was the last person they expected to find himself in the eye of the storm.

Those who know Zouma say he is a man of faith, of fun, of family. He is a loving husband to Sandra and a devoted father to son Kais and daughters Sihame and Sanaa.

It is understood they have no pets at their London residence and have not had any since their cats were repossessed by the RSPCA, though they have welcomed a new addition to the household – a baby boy who arrived a month after West Ham’s Europa Conference League triumph and whose name they do not yet want to reveal.

Choosing the perfect name can be tricky for any parent. Zouma’s father, Guy, chose ‘Kurt’ because of Jean Claud Van Damme’s 1989 film Kickboxer in which the muscular protagonist ‘Kurt Sloane’ masters the ancient art of Muay Thai in order to avenge his brother Eric.

That link was somewhat soured last year when Van Damme was encouraging his tens of millions of followers on social media to sign a petition demanding Zouma face ‘strong and appropriate’ action from the French Football Federation. Nevertheless, much like ‘The Muscles from Brussels’ in that cult classic, the budding footballer was determined to succeed for his family’s sake.

One of seven siblings, he wanted to help them move out of their congested flat in Lyon. He joined Valux-en-Velin at the age of nine before leaving for Saint-Etienne, playing with only the number 33 on the back of his shirt.

This is common in French football, as youngsters have to earn the addition of their name. Zouma soon did, signing professionally at 16. He was the first in his family to win a contract in football, later followed by his older brother Lionel and younger brother Yoan.

They had a disciplined upbringing under Guy, who immigrated from the Central African Republic and was once quoted as saying: ‘I gave them an African education. They went to school and then to training. When they returned, they were too tired to do anything stupid.’

Zouma cannot escape the stupidity of his exploits in later life, nor the idiocy of allowing his brother to film the footage and use it on social media. To this day, you will find cat emojis in the comments of every picture he posts on Instagram, and his last appearance at Luton’s Kenilworth Road saw him taunted by the home support before he scored and cupped his ears in celebration.

In preparation for this piece, I spoke with Moyes at Rush Green. The topic was Zouma and, as Guy hoped when landing on the name ‘Kurt’ in 1994, the first attribute mentioned by his manager was that he is a ‘strong leader’.

There is a saying from Abu Hurayrah, a companion of the Islamic prophet Muhammad, which reads: ‘When God said, “I test only those I love,” I took the pain like it was an honour.’ It is known by many in the Muslim community including the Zouma family, though it is entirely coincidental that in Arabic, the name Abu Hurayrah means ‘Father of the Kittens’ with ancient legend telling how he always had a cat for company.

Zouma realises he brought his particular pain upon himself. Those close to the defender say he hopes people realise he made a mistake, learned his lesson and paid the price. Yet no matter how hard any of us may pray, public forgiveness takes time. West Ham have forgiven him. More than 18 months on from that shameful saga, he has been wearing the captain’s armband.

Moyes insisted he would decide on Declan Rice’s full-time successor during this international break but clearly, Zouma is the leading contender. The club’s owner David Sullivan has given him his vote of confidence, telling Mail Sport: ‘He loves West Ham United, its team and its players. He is a natural leader and a fantastic captain.’

The decision is down to Moyes, however, and he has consulted with colleagues about his idea to name him captain ahead of James Ward-Prowse. In other words, would there be a backlash? There has not been one during Zouma’s unbeaten four-game stint which has taken West Ham to fourth in the Premier League.

If he gets the full-time gig as expected, it is unlikely the club will make a song and dance of the appointment. Jose Mourinho once said Zouma had the potential to succeed John Terry as Chelsea captain and he is a popular choice among the West Ham players. They may poke fun at his penchant for anime – team-mates have even incorporated Dragon Ball Z references into previous goal celebrations in a nod to his enthusiasm – but it is all in good fun.

Last week, West Ham’s squad played a game where they named who they would want to be stranded with on a desert island. Zouma was a regular nominee, with Benrahma and Jarrod Bowen among those naming him . Aguerd responded by shouting ‘ZOUUU’ – the favourite cry of West Ham fans whenever he does something impressive on the field.

Zouma and Aguerd are inseparable at Rush Green. Aguerd was one of the French speakers who was helped to feel at home in London by Zouma when he arrived from Rennes in 2022. The same went for Maxwel Cornet and Alphonse Areola, with whom he won the Under-20 World Cup in 2013. As Sullivan says, Zouma loves West Ham and they love him.

Zouma signed from Chelsea for £29.8million in 2021 and his contract is up in 2025, though given his importance to the team, naturally they would like to tie him down to a longer deal. He is already among their best-paid players – on £125,000 per week – so any pay-rise would not be significant in this age of Saudi Arabian wages. However, Zouma is understood to feel grateful for the club’s support over the last year-and-a-half and open to negotiations.

Whether France has forgiven him is another matter. Zouma was left out of Didier Deschamps’ latest squad. His last appearance for Les Bleus was in November 2021, a World Cup-qualifying win over Finland which occurred before you know what. He never made it to Qatar 2022, with Deschamps describing his actions as ‘shocking and intolerable’, and is still absent.

‘We are not completely sure,’ says Vincent Duluc, one of France’s most respected football writers from the newspaper L’Equipe, when asked why. ‘But we think the main reason is still cat-gate. ‘And the competition, of course – a guy like (Arsenal’s William) Saliba, who is a better defender, won’t even be a starter (against the Republic of Ireland) even though (Liverpool’s Ibrahima) Konate is injured. But he is no more a popular figure as we are a cat nation. He did not make the headlines in France when West Ham won the Conference League.’

We cannot say rival fans have forgiven him, either. Luton’s Kenilworth Road is among English football’s tightest grounds and in the warm-up, one supporter leaned over the advertising surround. Filming the passing drill on his mobile phone, he shouted: ‘Zouma, you’ve got to kick it like it’s a cat.’ He did not get a reaction. Zouma was booed on the ball during the game and subjected to chants of ‘that’s how your cat felt’ while receiving treatment for a head injury.

Yet the abuse aimed at Zouma had been slowly but surely disappearing otherwise. Jeers are now drowned out by West Ham’s supporters shouting ‘ZOUUU’, which some players also yelled when he returned to the dressing room after being named man of the match at Luton. Zouma and his wife, Sandra, set aside time to answer the hundreds of handwritten fan mail they receive monthly, some of which are thank you letters.

Mail Sport has learned they are involved in various charity work worldwide – such as the ALFATH centre for deaf and hard of hearing children in Meknes, Morocco, and an orphanage called La Cite De L’Enfance (The City of Childhood) in Setif, Algeria, and the renovation of a school in Bouar, Central African Republic, among others – though these projects are largely kept private.

There is the side to this footballer which we do not see and the side which, for many, cannot be unseen. You can decide for yourself whether Zouma is worthy of forgiveness; a good guy or a bad bloke; a man who made a mistake or a convicted criminal; a fitting captain or, as has been thrown at him since February of last year, a ‘cat-kicker’.

You can let him know the next time West Ham visit your club when, in all likelihood, he will be leading the team out of the tunnel.