The English striker you’ve never heard of leading Toulouse FC’s promotion charge

Toulouse FC’s recent loss to Auxerre in the French Ligue 2 on February 2nd was not a classic game of football.

Auxerre dominated and Toulouse could only manage a 93rd minute penalty in response to Auxerre’s three earlier in the game.

The consolation goal, however, was significant. It was English striker Rhys Healey’s ninth goal of the season, his ninth in 18 games for the club which may read like an average striker’s haul, but when one finds out Healey has averaged a goal every 95 minutes on the pitch, nearly a goal for every full game, eyebrows must be raised.

When on the books at Cardiff City, Rhys Healey was hardly a household name. In total, the 26 year old featured 14 times in six years for the club, mostly from the bench. He is fast becoming one in the region of Southern France known more for its rugby than its football.

Manchester-born Healey started his career at Connah’s Quay Nomads in the Cymru Premier, somewhat poetically as his first team’s name set the tone for a nomadic career encompassing nine leagues and eight clubs to date.

After impressing at Connah’s Quay, Healey was snapped up by Cardiff and found himself appearing off the bench once in the club’s ill-fated Premier League 2013/14 campaign under Malky Mackay and Ole Gunnar Solskjaer.

After this, Healey was confined to the realm of the loan, an inescapable cycle that resulted in him featuring for Colchester, Dundee, Newport County, Torquay United, and MK Dons. It was no wonder then, that when Healey found himself appearing thrice off the bench in Cardiff’s first Premier League season since his debut for the club, that he felt a sense of déjà vu, that his career there was not moving anywhere fast.

In 2019 he moved to MK Dons permanently where he impressed, winning Player of the Season, before being signed by the newly-relegated Toulouse FC last summer.

Toulouse, who when the pandemic forced Ligue 1 to cancel remaining games were relegated after spending the whole campaign glued to the foot of the table, are seeking an immediate return to the summit.

Like Englishmen forging their careers in other European leagues, he has found his feet quickly and his nine goals and one assist have cemented his name in the starting XI alongside Frenchman Amine Adli.

If Healey wasn’t yet known by fans of rival Ligue 2 clubs by the start of December, he certainly was by the end – as his six goals in five appearances earned him the deserved Player of the Month award.

Typically of someone who knows what it means to work their way up the football leagues, Healey has stayed humble. Shrugging off praise on receiving the award, Healey argued he ‘could only achieve this because of the hard work of my teammates.’ He knows what the significance of the award is though, and he is following in prestigious footsteps. The last TFC player to win it was France international Andre Pierre Gignac. If Healey can reach his heights, Toulouse fans are in for a treat.

Gignac is not the only player Healey has been compared to either, and TFC fans have recently taken to drawing comparisons between him and Jamie Vardy. It is not hard to see why.

Speedy Healey, with his slighter build, has a record of getting onto through balls in-behind opposition defences with devastating consequences, just like the Leicester City stalwart.

Like Vardy, speed and a clinical finishing are not all he has in his locker, however, and Toulouse fans were treated to a goal-of-the-season-contender free kick in their 2-2 draw with En Avant Guingamp on December 6. Healey is growing in confidence in France and his future is looking extremely bright.

Toulouse currently sit in the second of two promotion spots in Ligue 2, and if Healey’s goals can spur them onto promotion as they seem to be doing, his third foray into top flight football will inevitably be more successful than his first two. Following in the steps of not only Gignac, but also former Violets Wissam Ben Yedder and Martin Braithwaite, Healey can become an icon at the club if he maintains his current vein of form.

After winning December’s Player of the Month award, holding the magazine Foot 2021 with Houssem Aouar, Kylian Mbappe, and Florian Thauvin on its front cover, Healey joked that hopefully next season the magazine’s front cover would feature him on the front alongside Mbappe, and why not? His ambition is encouraging and signifies a hugely confident and positive attitude at Toulouse who are flying after a poor start to the season. If they continue as they are, why shouldn’t he and his teammates be rubbing shoulders with the Neymar’s and Mbappe’s of this world?

Maybe then Cardiff might regret how little a chance he was given at the top.

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