Camel Meriem celebrated as FootGolf World Champion for France

An official Monaco history account celebrated Camel Meriem as France’s FootGolf world champion, turning a former AS Monaco and France midfielder into one of the sport’s most visible faces. At 47, Meriem carries rare crossover credibility into a discipline still building its audience beyond the football set.

His football résumé still gives that recognition extra force. Sky Sports lists Meriem, born on 18 October 1979, as a former AS Monaco, Olympique de Marseille and France international midfielder, and FootGolf coverage has highlighted the fact that he once scored in a Champions League quarter-final before taking up the game with a different ball and a different set of rules. In FootGolf circles, he is described as one of the biggest names in the sport and a global reference, with his technique and elite-level play doing as much as his old football badge to draw attention.

The detail that separates Meriem from many of his peers is simple and decisive: he is naturally two-footed. In a sport where control, angle and touch matter on every approach, that gives him a precision edge that has become part of his reputation. For FootGolf, a former top-level footballer succeeding at the highest level is more than a novelty. It is proof that the game can absorb retired professionals and give them a new stage without stripping away the technical qualities that made them famous in the first place.

That significance is easier to see against the sport’s compact world-title history. FIFG’s champions page lists only three men’s individual FootGolf world champions before the current cycle, Bela Lengyel in 2012, Christian Otero in 2016 and Matias Perrone in 2018. FIFG says the 2026 FootGolf World Championship in Acapulco, Mexico will be the fifth FootGolf World Championship in history, which underlines how selective the sport’s top tier remains. In the men’s leaderboard from Acapulco, F. Warsemann and Gonzalo Novosad finished tied for first at -29 after the final round, with J. Kozak and Ben Clarke next at -26.

Meriem’s FootGolf rise also did not begin on the world stage. A 2021 Coupe FootGolf France post showed him winning the final of the French Cup, a domestic title that signaled his switch from footballer to serious contender was already complete. That progression, from Monaco and Marseille to French Cup winner and world-champion figure, has made Meriem a useful face for a sport that leans on retired players for star power and on familiar names to widen its reach.