Antoine Griezmann becomes France's Euro 2016 hero months after sister survived Bataclan terrorist attack
Antoine Griezmann scored both goals for France in Les Bleus' Euro 2016 semifinal win over Germany on Thursday night.
That sends the hosts to Paris, where they'll face Cristiano Ronaldo's Portugal side on Sunday for the championship. Griezmann is the tournament's top scorer, with six goals in six matches for France.
But his story comes with an additional, irresistible wrinkle: Griezmann's older sister survived the terror attack at the Bataclan concert hall in Paris last November by spreading herself motionless on the floor as ISIS-affiliated gunmen murdered others around her.
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“If you moved, you were shot,” Maud Griezmann told Sam Borden of The New York Times in an article published Thursday. “A person next to me moved, and they shot him. They just shot him, and I heard him land.”
Maud Griezmann was at the Bataclan with her boyfriend, according to the Times. Meanwhile, across town, Antoine Griezmann and the French national team played a friendly match against Germany the same night. But that game was rendered a footnote after terrorists attempted to attack the Stade de France as part of a series of coordinated strikes across the city.
Maud Griezmann is 28 years old; Antoine Griezmann is 25. Big sister now works as a public relations agent for her soccer-star brother -- an arrangement the Times reports began this January as Antoine's professional career took off with Atletico Madrid, his club team.
“It is an amazing time for Antoine now,” Maud told the paper. “It is an amazing time for all of us.”
November's friendly between France and Germany at the Stade de France was the two European powerhouses' most recent meeting until Thursday's Euro 2016 semifinal. That night last November, family members anxiously awaited word from Maud as news of the Bataclan attack spread.
"Thanks God my sister was able to exit the Bataclan," Antoine posted to Twitter after Maud was confirmed safe. "All my prayers go to the victims and their families."
More recently, this Thursday night, Antoine scored two goals to put France through to the Euro 2016 final.
Griezmann's first goal Thursday came on a penalty in first-half stoppage time that swung the match's momentum toward France after 45 scoreless minutes dominated by Germany. His second, which all but sealed the deal with some 20 minutes remaining in the match, was an opportunistic strike after a bit of magic by teammate Paul Pogba.
Now Les Bleus advance to the final in Paris, where they'll seek to deliver France a Euro tournament championship eight months after one of the country's darkest days.
At the center of it all? Griezmann, the tournament's leading scorer, breakout star and a man whose sister narrowly survived November's terrorist attacks.
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Sam Laird is Mashable's Senior Sports Reporter. He covers the wide, weird world of sports from all angles -- as well as occasional other topics -- from Mashable's San Francisco bureau. Before joining Mashable in November 2011, his freelance work appeared in publications including the New York Times, New York Times Magazine, Slam, and East Bay Express. Sam is a graduate of UC Berkeley and UC Santa Cruz, and basketball and burritos take up most of his spare time. Follow him on Twitter @samcmlaird.
