This is me: Elohim Prandi

For all the skills one has to learn to become a better handball player, it sometimes comes down to experiences in everyday life to make you the player – and person – you are. Ask Elohim Prandi. The Paris Saint-Germain Handball star and France national team key player has bravely battled his way through life challenges. He shares his life and career journey with us in his own words.

THIS IS ME: Elohim Prandi

It can take a while for someone to be happy with where he is at.

It can take years, even. For me, it took me almost 25 years to be at peace with who I am and where I am. Better late than never, I guess…

Things were not easy for me from the start. In my childhood, I did not miss anything. My mother, Mezuela, was always there for me.

I can warn you, I will speak a lot about her through the journey you and I make together. Because she is the most special person in my life. She is my soulmate, my best friend, the one that I turn to when I need advice and the first one to put me back in my place.

As a mother, she was there to take care of me and protect me in any way. She wanted me to create and walk my own path, to make my own errors so I could grow up as a person.

Even on the sports side, she is the one that I turn to for advice every time.

My dad, Raoul, was a different kind. He separated from my mum when I was still a kid and it took me a while to digest a lot of things. I needed time to process things with him, to rebuild a proper relationship as well.

There was a lot of hurt between us, a lot of things that went untold and some expectations that were not fulfilled.

We sat down and we talked a lot, I asked questions that needed answers, but now everything has been fine for a couple of years. I guess you understand things better when you are 25 than when you are 15.

I have forgiven a lot and accepted the situation as it is, he gave me a lot of love despite the fact that I was brought up by my mother and my stepdad.

Anyway, believe it or not, it was not because of my parents that I started handball. I first started rugby, and I do believe I could have made a career at it.

“Why rugby?” you would ask. In a lot of ways, this is a very similar sport to handball. The values are the same, ones of family, friendship, but also of fighting in fairness. Physically, as well, there are a lot of things in common.

But in the end, I did not choose it. My mum, who was the captain of the France women’s handball team in her prime, did not push me to choose handball. Nor did my dad, even though he had played the Olympics with France in Atlanta in 1996.

But I wanted to make my parents proud. I wanted to show them that I could also live up to their name, that I could also belong to the top players of my era. Being the son of my parents, I always felt like I had to prove more than the others.

Having a name makes things easier in the beginning, up to the point where you have to make people forget that your dad played the Olympics. You want to be better than your ancestors and my parents always wanted that for me as well.

My mum always pushed me to make the right choices while, handball-wise, my dad had quite a different approach. Whatever I would do, it would never be enough for him. Never good enough, never high enough, never anything enough…

It would hurt, sometimes, but it would also push me to be even better. I wanted to prove him that I was able to deliver, that I could be enough, in a way.

There are a few people, a few coaches that have been really important throughout my career.

Daniel Hager is one, as he set me up on the right tracks for a few years in Ivry, where it all started. I was going all ways, ballistic the whole time, but he taught some values that would be key for me in the future.

Also Rastko Stefanovic in Ivry, as he gave me my first minutes with the professional team.

After Ivry, I made the move to Nîmes. I needed a bigger stage to express myself and there, I could join with Franck Maurice, who was coaching there.

As my godfather, he was a very important person to me. But for two years, he was on my back every single second. He would expect so much from me, but he did all of that for my own good. Franck made me grow up so much as a handball player and as a person that I will always be thankful to him.

I think I always built my career step by step, and the story that I am telling you now is somehow reflecting that. I had some really bad moments along the way, but I now look back at that period as a steady climb.

My performances with Nîmes raised a few eyebrows, and my phone started to ring. Nantes, Montpellier and Paris Saint-Germain were on the line.

Now I have to admit that I had doubts when all these clubs called me. Because I did not know whether I would be up to the task. I did not know whether the moment was right, whether I would be able to adapt in an environment so different to Nîmes.

While Nîmes was a really small, comfy setting, Paris was the complete opposite. But I went for it anyway.

I thought to myself that if I was to change, then the bigger the change had to be. I moved to become the No. 1 in the team playing with Mikkel Hansen and Nikola Karabatic, the two best left backs in history.

My first months in Paris were not the easiest ones. I was not mature enough, I had a hard time being able just to have a stable performance. One day I would score 10, and the next game I would miss 10 shots.

But Raul Gonzalez had a plan for me, he told me that on the third year in Paris, I would be finally ready, and that is exactly what happened.

I can honestly say, with all due humility, that I am now a player that counts in one of the best sides in the world.

But I guess that, if things are going upwards on the court, it is also because I am a different man outside of the court.

As I said before, my relationship with my father Raoul is better than it has ever been.

But in the days after I got stabbed, in January 2022, I changed completely my way of seeing things.

I have not told anyone that before, but I’ll tell you how things went. After I got out of the hospital, I went to Banyuls. Banyuls is a place by the sea, in the South of France, and it is heaven to me. I’ve been there for years, and somehow it feels like home.

There I met again with Jean-Louis Guichard. He was the head of delegation when I was playing with the French under-19 national team. He joined me in Banyuls, and to put things bluntly: he was my therapy.

I woke up at 9 a.m. every morning and the two of us would go on hikes, two or three hours every morning. At the reward for these efforts would be a small beer on the seafront.

We talked a lot, I cried a lot as well during these months after what happened, but I needed it. I needed to get things out and Jean-Louis was there for me, the light in the tunnel. My mum saw me under a light that she had never seen.

I am usually quite reserved and quite shy as a person but when the cup is full, it flows out. And that is exactly what happened.

My family was so important for me in this period of my life, and I’m still shaking whenever I speak again about those moments. It was, emotionally, very, very strong, but Jean-Louis healed both my body and my mind. I have an unconditional love for him and I know what I owe him.

During these three months away from handball, along with him, I gave 120% to come back as fast as I could. I would end up crying in the sea after running along the shore, because my lungs would burn as hell inside my chest. But it was worth it.

Jean-Louis gave me faith in handball and competition again. When something like this happens, when you are just centimetres away from dying, you ask yourself whether all of this is worth it. Couldn’t I just buy a house in Banyuls, become an estate agent and buy myself a nice car?

Jean-Louis put my mind back straight, and I will never thank him enough.

This is when I understood I was ready to play at the highest possible level. That sports was going to be my life and that I wanted to be the best I could ever do, both with my club and my national team.

And if you ask me what competition is the most on my radar, I would say the EHF Champions League. And not just because I am talking to you EHF guys, but because…I’d say because winning a competition with your club feels even more massive than anything else.

And it would mean a lot more winning it with Paris, as the club has never done it before. To be among the first to put the club on top of Europe would be everything; winning the Champions League with Paris would mean writing history of the competition, but also of your club.

But I know it will come someday, I don’t put myself under any additional pressure, there is already enough from the outside.

Pressure is one of the things I have learnt how to handle in the past few years. “What are the other things?”, you would say. I have understood that you can’t be everybody’s friend, and that some people will like you, some will love you it, and some won’t. And that’s OK.

As long as my family is around me, then that’s fine. Matteo, my brother, Benjamin, my stepdad, they are with me wherever I go, and that is the most important thing.

I have learnt that life can go away in the blink of an eye, and I cherish it now more than ever.

It took me a while to understand that, and to be happy with who I am. But I am at peace.

Elohim Prandi
December 2023