Eden Hazard assimilated himself into Lille's youth set-up so smoothly that some of his team-mates did not even realise he was from Belgium.
"We were all French in the group and he was always hanging around with us. I thought he was French," Yannis Salibur, Hazard's former Lille team-mate, told L'Equipe this week.
"I only found out he was Belgian when he said 'nonante' [the Belgian French word for 'ninety']."
Hazard joined Lille's academy at the age of 14, his decision strongly influenced by the fact that his family home in the Belgian town of Braine-le-Comte, 20 miles southwest of Brussels, would be just a short hop across the border.