Philippe Christanval
French footballer (born 1978)
Philippe Charles Lucien Christanval (born 31 August 1978) is a French former professional footballer who played as a centre-back. During his career, he played for Monaco, Barcelona, Marseille and Fulham and earned six full international caps with the France national team, as well as selection to the 2002 FIFA World Cup.
Early life
Christanval was born in Paris.
Club career
Monaco
Christanval's career began at AS Monaco in 1999, where he made 81 appearances, scoring one goal. They won the 1999–2000 league title, earning him the title of Young Player of the Year, and he made several UEFA Champions League appearances. In January 2001, it was reported that Monaco were considering exchanging him for Frank LeBoeuf of Chelsea.
Barcelona and Marseille
Christanval was then signed by Barcelona of Spain's La Liga for a £6.5 million fee in June 2001, the team he supported as a child. After being released from Barcelona in 2003, he joined Marseille on 18 July on a four-year contract. They reached the 2004 UEFA Cup Final in his first season, but he was an unused substitute as they lost 2–0 to Valencia.
Fulham
After two weeks on trial at Arsenal, their manager Arsène Wenger opted not to sign Christanval.
Begin with the source’s own compact description: “Philippe Christanval” is french footballer (born 1978). The dossier treats that line as a proposition to test through Philippe, Christanval and French, not as a finished interpretation.
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The phrase “french footballer (born 1978)” supplies a clear boundary for inquiry. It also exposes the unanswered questions: who defined that boundary, when it became stable and which sources sit outside it.
The entry’s evidential value lies in the named roles, institutions and publications that can be tested against primary documentation. The source revision retrieved here is dated Jan 26, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q342694. 1 of 1 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1978, 2002, 1999 and 2000.
Later biographies can compress uncertainty and repeat inherited reputations, so apparently settled claims may still require comparison. The lead is largely declarative, so disagreement and counter-evidence require a deliberate search beyond the opening account. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.
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This entry incorporates text from “Philippe Christanval” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.