Arsenal’s Mathieu Flamini Has Outwitted The World

I have heard of some pretty interesting hobbies. Some people are into stamp collecting. Some play golf. Some are really bold and cook. But Mathieu Flamini looked at all of those hobbies, laughed and said ‘not for me.’ The Arsenal midfielder has another hobby, and I am not referring to random breakout games against Tottenham Hotspur. Mathieu Flamini has discovered an alternative source of energy not called oil. Or at least his super secret company has.

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Let that sink in for a second.

I have also heard of secrets. People hide things all the time. Maybe they are part of the mafia. Perhaps they purposely wear their underwear backwards. Or maybe they keep 400-employee companies secret for seven years until that company becomes the first to mass produce a compound known as Levulinic Acid. This compound is “a molecule identified by the US Department of Energy as one of the 12 molecules with the potential to replace petrol in all its forms,” Flamini is quoted as saying by the Sun.

The story goes that Flamini teamed up with friend and business partner Pasquale Granata to form GF Biochemicals, a company in Caserta, Italy. The company has over 400 employees and they are the first to put a market value on this Levulinic Acid, a mere £20 billion.

Flamini apparently “spent millions to fund the research, find and equip a factory in Italy and run the costly trials that lasted years.”

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The story says that Mathieu Flamini has kept this endeavor secret from team, friends and family for a whole seven years. “Not even my family knew anything about it. My parents did not know about it until about a year ago. First, they were worried, but now they are proud. My Milan team-mates probably found out in our launch this week and my Arsenal teammates will probably find out reading this. I don’t think Arsene Wenger knows, I never spoke to him about it.”

Mathieu Flamini went on: “To me, it was an escape. A football career is made of ups and downs. It cleared my mind and helped me to think about something different. And it was something intellectually challenging too.”

Again, I have heard of escapes. Some people have man caves. Some people go on vacations. But I find it absolutely hilarious that of all people to discover an alternative source of fuel, it was Mathieu Flamini.

As the Frenchman put it, so many people in the world, so many huge companies, have been working to develop a reliable alternative source for years. Ever since it has been discovered that crude oil is a finite research and also bad for the environment, the search has been on.

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Even Mathieu Flamini had a good sense of humor about it “Pasquale and I still ask — why us? So many people have tried and failed before so why did we succeed?”

Does anyone else find this incredibly funny? Who knew that our back-up, rambunctious midfielder was into the wide world of chemistry? How could we have ever guessed? This truly has to be one of the most bizarre stories to come across the footballing world. Good for Mathieu Flamini though. The man wanted an escape and he found one. One that will make him billions and save the earth. If only more people had constructive hobbies like that.