Lucas and Theo Hernandez go head to head as brotherly love is put to the test

The Hernandez brothers, Lucas and Theo, have always been inseparable.

When they stepped up into organised football together at Rayo Majadahonda, a small club on the outskirts of Madrid, their mother, Laurence Py, asked if the pair could still play together despite their age gap of 19 months.

Py wanted to enrol her boys in the soccer school but, as the sole earner, finances were tight so Rayo offered the pair a scholarship to play. They duly shone.

Advertisement

“Theo was a roadrunner, with an ability to go up and down, with an explosiveness that I have seen in few,” said Manu Gonzalez, their former coach, in an interview with El Diario Vasco. “Lucas was a wonder of nature in terms of strength, power and speed. He stood out from the others. At eight or nine years old, it was very difficult to predict if he was going to reach the elite, but they both had the attributes”.

Manchester City midfielder Rodri also began his career at Rayo and, not long after, he joined Atletico Madrid. The Hernandez brothers followed suit.

Younger brother Theo was the first to catch the eye of Atletico and was offered a trial. But because their mother was unable to find childcare for Lucas, she brought him along to the trial. Spotted by club coaches kicking a ball with a friend nearby, Lucas was called over and offered the chance to take part. From then on, the pair never looked back.

Lucas, who is a more aggressive and defensive left-back than Theo, would represent Atletico from youth to senior level across 12 years. He made 110 appearances for the first team before German champions Bayern Munich signed him in 2019 for what was then club and Bundesliga record fee of €80million (£69m; $86m).

Theo, meanwhile, remained with Atleti for a decade but did not feature for the first team. Instead, he controversially crossed the city divide and went to Real Madrid in 2017, signed after his €24million release clause was met. He stayed for two years before swapping Spain for Italy, and has now made more than 178 appearances for AC Milan.

Despite growing up in Spain —“My musical and cooking tastes — except cheese, which has to be French — are very much Spanish,” Lucas told The Guardian in 2021 — the pair were capped at youth level by France before Lucas’ first call-up in 2018. Three years later, Theo would join him and the pair started together against Belgium in the semi-finals of the Nations League in October 2021.

Advertisement

Lucas began the game as the left-sided central defender, a position where he is comfortable, while Theo started at full-back. They became the first brothers to represent France together since Patrick and Herve Revelli in 1974.

The pair now have 56 France caps between them (Lucas 35, Theo 21) but, despite parting ways at Atletico, they had never played against each other until PSG’s 3-0 victory against Milan last month.

There were plenty of near misses, such as two Madrid derbies in 2017-18 in which Lucas started for Atletico but Theo was an unused substitute for Madrid. For one of those matches, Marca ran a pre-match cover that featured Py and her two sons, and the headline: “Who do you want to win, mum?”

The battle of the brothers

That game at Parc des Princes, then, was a special moment for the family.

The Hernandez brothers joined an exclusive group of families to have faced off in European competition including, among others, the Pogbas in 2017 (Florentin’s Saint-Etienne against Paul’s Manchester United), the Xhakas in 2016 (Granit’s Arsenal against Taulant’s Basel), and the Mac Allisters (Liverpool’s Alexis and Union Saint-Gilloise’s Kevin) as recently as last month. 

Their football trajectory, from Rayo to the French national side, is perhaps no surprise considering their father, Jean-Francois Hernandez, was a centre-back who played for Toulouse, Sochaux and Marseille in his native France, and later Compostela, Atletico and Rayo Vallecano. It was that stint in La Liga that prompted the family to relocate to Spain.

But Hernandez Senior played no role in his sons’ lives.

The Hernandez brothers’ parents split when Lucas was six and Theo almost five. “My mother, brother and I soon became a sworn trio after the split,” Lucas told Goal and DAZN in 2019. “Theo and I always had a football with us: morning, noon and night. We played together all the time. My brother is my best friend, we are very close.

Advertisement

“We never understood why he (Jean-Francois) left. So we just grew up with our mother. She lived, worked and gave everything to us. We did not lack for anything.”

After their father left in 2004, Py worked as a beautician to make ends meet. “I had to do everything on my own, especially since my whole family was in France,” she said in 2018. The boys would spend their summers in Haute-Saone, in northeast France, with their grandparents. There they would play football and Lucas would hone his love of fishing with his grandfather.

For nearly two decades, the brothers heard nothing of their father. But then he reappeared.

A France Football investigation in 2022 tracked him down, retelling the journey that had seen him depart Europe to live in Thailand, before returning eventually to France. It also put forward a different perspective, told by those who knew their father. They suggested he had been shut out of the boys’ upbringing by their mother following a failed attempt to secure custody of the brothers in 2004.

Py declined to comment when those claims were put to her prior to the publication of France Football’s investigation.

The article painted a complicated picture when it dropped on the eve of the World Cup in Qatar last year. But it would have no bearing on their displays. Cruelly, they were denied the chance to play together on a World Cup stage as Lucas suffered a serious knee ligament injury during their opening group game against Australia. It was Theo who stepped off the bench to replace him. 

Lucas, who was part of the squad that won the World Cup in 2018, joined PSG in the summer and faced an uphill battle to win everyone over. He endured a backlash from some PSG supporters given he was born in Marseille, the club for whom his estranged father had played from 1995-97.

Advertisement

“My only memory of Marseille is when I beat them with Atletico Madrid in the Europa League final,” he told l’Equipe in July. “I was born in Marseille, it’s true, but I can’t help that. Apart from that, I have nothing that connects me to the city, and no member of my family lives there.”

He does have a slightly awkward tattoo of his 2020 Champions League final victory on his right leg — his Bayern side defeated PSG in Lisbon. But he has quietly become a key player for Luis Enrique, slotting into the Parisian defence at left-back.

He was rested against Montpellier over the weekend, but will now be looking to prevent Theo, of Milan, from securing revenge for their 3-0 defeat in France.

Brother v Brother in UEFA Competitions

Source: UEFA.com

It may be another game with divided family loyalties, but that will last for only 90 minutes. Their journey on and off the field has only brought them closer. For them, they will just be playing football together again.

“It’s another beautiful wink from destiny,” Lucas said in September. “As soon as I saw that we were playing Milan, I called Theo. We teased each other a little, but nothing mean. The duel remains on the field. It’s going to be an incredible time for us and our family.

“This will inevitably be special.”

GO DEEPER

The inexorable rise of Warren Zaire-Emery, the 17-year-old who can do everything

(Top photos: Getty Images)

ncG1vNJzZmismJqutbTLnquim16YvK57lGlpcG1iZ3xzfJFsZmppX2WEcLTEq6WappSax2680qBkpqGclrtuwMeepmakpZiutHs%3D