Enzo Forletta

He twice turned down Top 14 clubs to stay at Perpignan in the second division. In 2026 he went back there anyway, with a championship medal.

Enzo Forletta turned down the Top 14 twice to stay at Perpignan while the club was in the second division. Clermont were among those he refused. He left at 26, won a French championship within two years, and in 2026 went back to Perpignan.

Note on his current club: Forletta is still listed in Montpellier‘s squad data. He returned to USA Perpignan in 2026, six years after leaving.

Loosehead prop, 1.75m and 118kg, and 32 years old.

Perpignan is his home town and he has spent most of his life at its two clubs, starting at ten with the Étoile Sportive Catalane and moving to USAP in 2011. Alain Hyardet gave him a debut at twenty, off the bench against Colomiers, and played him twenty-one times in a season that followed relegation.

The second-division title of 2018 was largely his doing at the front. In the final against Grenoble he packed down with Raphaël Carbou and Alex Brown and won it 38-13, then chose to stay and sign three more years. A Top 14 season at the bottom of the table followed, and another year in Pro D2 after that.

The Hérault came calling in 2020. A Challenge Cup followed in 2021, won from the front row alongside Guilhem Guirado and Mohamed Haouas, and France capped him that July against Australia off the bench for Jean-Baptiste Gros. The next Test brought a first start and a second cap, and there has not been a third. A ruck injury in a European quarter-final cost him the 2022 semi-final and final, though the title still counts.

In October 2023 he and Thomas Darmon were convicted of aggravated violence and fined 90 day-fines at 70 euros each, over an incident during the 2022 title celebrations. The other man involved, who had struck the player Pierre Lucas first, was ordered to pay Forletta 1,000 euros.