Enzo Le Fée has been chatting for 25 minutes when it becomes clear that his ability to extract rabbits from hats is not confined to the pitch.
“I’m a magician,” says Sunderland’s French playmaker as the conversation drifts to life off the field. “Yes, really! I can do some magic, tricks with the cards, that sort of thing. I used to practise a lot when I was young so I got really good. I still sometimes like to do my tricks but I’m a bit shy about performing them now.”
These days Le Fée prefers to concentrate on casting his spells on rival teams, bewitching Sunderland fans and bewildering opponents in equal measure. Régis Le Bris’s £20m signing from Roma possesses an unerring ability to glimpse attacking possibilities undetected by other players and transform midfield chaos into a coherent threat.
Not content with helping turn the passing triangles beloved by Sunderland’s manager into the type of trigonometry opposition markers struggle to comprehend, Le Fée knows when to slow things down and when to speed play up. He understands the right moments to pass first-time and when he needs to draw defenders out of position by delaying deliveries until space opens for teammates.
Yet there is far more to his game than exquisite touch, high‑calibre technique and audacious improvisation as he drifts between the lines. Off the ball, Le Fée is a disciplined battler, a diligent presser and, for a slight man of 173cm (5ft 8in), a surprisingly effective tackler.
“I can be good on the ball but from the first minute I’m also fighting,” he says. “I try to bring some magic but I win a lot of tackles as well. That’s what Sunderland fans love. Since I was a young boy I’ve always been smaller than everyone so I had to learn how to fight.
“My best ability is when I have the ball. I enjoy finding solutions to problems. But in this league you’re no good if you don’t work hard for the team when we defend without the ball. If I can alter the game it’s perfect but I have to do the other side too.”
Whether occupying his current preferred central role as a deep‑lying No 10, placed further back as a No 6 or No 8, or deployed on the left, Le Fée represents a welcome antidote to a sometimes sterile, set-piece-dominated modern game full of aggressive grappling at corners and overcoached players. His resistance to robotic, painting-by-numbers football has provided Sunderland supporters with considerable joy and explains why Le Bris believes a playmaker who could do with scoring a few more goals possesses the potential to reach the highest echelons.
“Height is very important to a lot of coaches today,” Le Fée reflects. “But there’s this midfielder called Pedri at Barcelona … To me football’s about what’s inside your head, about instinct, not how tall you are.”
The concern on Wearside is that his quick, clever feet and even sharper brain have captivated Premier League rivals. Liverpool seem particularly enamoured. “It’s really good to hear, it’s flattering,” Le Fée says. “You want to play in a really big club, of course. But I enjoy my time at Sunderland a lot. I’m not sure I’ve done the maximum here yet. Because they have given me a lot, I want to give more to Sunderland.
“At the moment my head is here, my heart is here and my house is here. I’m 100% a Sunderland guy.”
Le Bris would certainly be reluctant to lose a fellow Breton he first coached when Le Fée was a 12-year-old at Lorient. “We have a special relationship,” says Le Fée, who seems more likely to be offered an improved contract than sold. “It makes it easier because I know how Régis works and he knows how I think. It simplifies things. Sometimes we don’t need to say a lot. And I think, for him, it’s good to have a player in the changing room who knows his ideas.”
As Le Bris rose from running Lorient’s academy to become the club’s head coach he honed Le Fée’s precocious talent and proved an important mentor to a teenager who missed training only when visiting his father, Jérémy Lamprière, in prison. Lamprière had been a gifted footballer who was drawn into a world of drug dealing and violence. When Le Fée was 21 he found him dead in bed. His father had taken his own life.
In the past he has spoken openly, and bravely, about the tragedy and he continues to actively support mental health campaigns but these days Le Fée refuses to let his life be defined by the past and prefers to look forward.
He would love to break into the France squad – “It’s an objective” – and play Champions League football, although for the moment at least, he enjoys Wearside too much for restlessness.
Back in Lorient, Le Bris encouraged Le Fée to take schoolwork seriously and Sunderland’s staff are impressed by the intelligence of a midfielder who has leapt from speaking minimal English 16 months ago to fluency. Much more importantly, they appreciate the impeccable politeness and humility of a player who, refreshingly, does not do aloof.
In January 2025 Le Fée’s naturally sunny disposition was clouded by the defensive confines of Roma’s tactical structure. A door had opened for Le Bris, contemplating his first transfer window as Sunderland’s manager, to secure an ambitious loan from Serie A.
“My wife knew I wasn’t happy, so when I got the message from Régis she told me straight away: ‘Whatever you want to do, we do,’” says Le Fée, who had arrived in Rome from Rennes six months earlier. “That was really good to hear … and from day one, we’ve been made so welcome here.
“Régis said we could do something really big together and help get Sunderland promoted but my advisers were really shocked. I said: ‘Trust me.’ I knew I needed to have the freedom to play, to feel the right emotion, again. I was really pleased Régis wanted me. He knows how to give me the confidence I need. It’s a pleasure to work with him.”
Le Fée is talking at the Academy of Light, Sunderland’s training complex, on an important anniversary. A year earlier Le Bris’s team overcame Coventry in the second leg of the playoff semi‑finals. Once Sheffield United were beaten at Wembley, Le Fée’s loan became a formal transfer.
Fifteen new faces, including most notably Granit Xhaka, followed during a hectic summer that prefaced a season dedicated to confounding Sunderland’s doubters. With two games remaining – Everton away on Sunday and Chelsea at home – hope, albeit slight, of Conference League qualification remains alive.
“We’ve got two finals now,” says Le Fée. “Our idea is to win them both. I don’t think it’s too early for Europe.”
Getting there would be a testament to Le Bris’s talent. “Every day he’s the first to arrive here and the last to leave,” says Le Fée. “The love he gives to football, it’s a lot. He demands a lot from us too but he always asks for our opinions. He gives us freedom to think for ourselves. He believes the most important thing for any player is to be able to sometimes take a risk.
“It means we’re not scared to try things … and to me football’s about feeling, instinct and, sometimes, magic.”
