Belgian footballer Thomas Meunier has been living a beautiful love story with his wife of almost 20 years. But their daily life is far from being rosy…
The Belgians are preparing to meet the Iranian team on June 21 and, with his experience, Thomas Meunier is one of the assets of the Red Devils. When he is not at a football stadium, the 34-year-old sportsman has a wonderful story with the love of his heart, Deborah Panzokou, with whom he has been in a relationship for almost two decades…
Thomas Meunier and his wife: “It’s not an easy life”
The lovebirds met very young, while they were still in high school. He was 17, she was 16. But at the time, nothing seemed to indicate that they would one day be a couple! “Sometimes she says to me: ‘I don’t understand why I fell in love with you because at school I found you ugly, I didn’t find you handsome.‘”, he told in the Belgian show Hep taxi!.
For some time, the two teenagers rubbed shoulders without their relationship being anything other than friendship. “We got along really well, but never had any attraction. And finally, it happened. One Friday evening (…) And we never left each other again“, he explained, visibly touched by the idea of talking about his relationship.
But if their story may seem moving, Thomas Meunier knows that it is not easy to be a footballer’s wife: “It’s not always an easy life. Because you don’t really have the time to do what you really want to do“. Deborah Panzokou would have liked to devote a few years of her life to study in Louvain, near Brussels, but, the footballer having played at the Paris Saint-Germain club, then Trabzonspor in Turkey and LOSC Lille, the couple did not want to live remotely.
Footballer’s wife: an ordeal for Deborah Panzokou? “What annoys me is…”
Thomas Meunier and Deborah Panzokou are also the happy parents of Landrys, 11 years old, Tianys, 9 years old, and a third child whom they welcomed in 2020. “We have founded something now. We have our own rhythm (…) Our life is all mapped out“, he confided. The lovers sealed their love in 2022 with a grandiose wedding at Mirwart Castle, in Belgium, followed by a honeymoon in French Polynesia where they once again celebrated their union with a local ceremony.
A graduate in professional makeup and management, Thomas Meunier’s wife nevertheless devotes her daily life to taking care of their three children, whom she no longer wishes to display on social networks in order to protect them. And if the Belgian of Congolese origin is happy with the life she leads, she wants to emphasize it: she is not only “a woman”!
“What annoys me is when people come up to me and talk directly to me about football. We can also talk about something else, I’m not just that“, she confided to the microphone of NRJ Belgium. But despite the few disadvantages, the wife of Thomas Meunier admits that she “was able to experience things that no one else was able to experience” thanks to this extraordinary status!
