In his small apartment on the outskirts of Roissy-en-Brie, a town in the eastern sprawl of Paris, Fassou Antoine Pogba is looking down on a front page featuring his son Paul, and contemplating life as the father of one of the most expensive footballer in the world. He taps a finger on the cover picture of his son, chin back staring down the camera, £89 million-worth of skill, power and strength in that famous red jersey and makes an observation. “If the club didn’t think he was worth all that money,” Fassou says, “they would never have paid it.”
It is hard to argue with that, although it is hard for anyone in the room to comprehend the journey that Paul has made from his first club just down the road, US Roissy, to his status as one of modern football’s elite, a man whose arrival at Manchester United was presented with all the glamour of a Hollywood movie. But every story, however remarkable, has a beginning, and this is the story of Paul Pogba, United midfielder, France international and the most expensive footballer in the world.
“He was always curious to know things, even as a small child,” says Fassou. “He always wanted to learn new things. We always encouraged him to do lots of things and to follow his interests. When I saw him play football for the first time though, I could see that his technique was very good. He was four years old, and he always played with boys who were older than him.”
In his living room are pictures of Paul with his older brothers, the twins Mathias and Florentin who play at Partick Thistle and St-Etienne respectively and are two years senior to the star of the family. There is a picture of the trio from Christmas 1998 sitting in Santa’s grotto. Pictures of the three brothers in the kit of US Roissy, are all afforded equal prominence on their father’s shelves.
Fassou is 78 and came to Paris from Guinea, his country of origin, at the age of 30. He worked in telecommunications and is retired now. He is not as mobile as he once was but he hopes to get to Manchester to see Paul play for the club to which he has returned. Fassou played football himself in Guinea and then when he came to Paris, although there were fewer opportunities then.
“I played at a level that was lower than the one I wanted to play at. I wanted my boys to play at the highest possible level. I was really hard on them when they were kids and that meant that they learned quickly. It got to the point where I was coaching other kids so they could give Paul a game when he was four, five, six years old. I was trying to bring them up to his level.
“While I was trying to bring these boys on, Paul was getting better and playing with boys much older than him, including his two brothers. At Residence la Renardiere [the estate the Pogba family lived on originally] every kid plays football all day so he always had a game to play in. Even then, as such a young child, he knew he wanted to be a professional footballer.”
For a small boy in Renardiere, there is only one place in Roissy-en-Brie to go for organised 11-a-side football. From the top of the 16-storey tower-blocks of Renardiere you can see the small stand and pitch of the Stade Paul Bessuard, which is home to US Roissy, the little football club where dreams come true. There is one more place to go to understand the factors that shaped the development of Pogba, and that is his true home turf: Residence la Renardiere, the housing estate a short walk from Stade Paul Bessuard. It was there in block 13 on Avenue Auguste Renoir that the Pogba brothers grew up with their mother Yeo, a major influence on all her sons’ careers, who now lives, according to locals, in nearby Bussy Saint-Georges.
The classic trope of modern football is that every big star must come from streets that are inevitably mean, and in doing so narrowly escape a life of crime. Renardiere is modest by the standards of middle-class France but there is nothing mean or threatening about it. People are friendly and welcoming, there is a community barbecue taking place and everywhere children of all ages are doing one thing above all. They are playing football.
There is plenty of green space and a newly installed hard court for football and basketball that came after the Pogbas left. At the centre of the estate is a huge Paul Pogba mural, painted by three boys who still live there. It is treated like every other wall in Renardiere, in that balls are kicked against it every hour of the day. The vast majority of the people here are, explains Ahmed Diawara, 16, first or second generation immigrants from central African Francophone countries. His family originate from Mali. The family of his friend, Boubacan Dioumanera, 16, are from Senegal. The Pogbas were from Guinea. These two teenagers were too young to have played with Paul when he lived on Renardiere but they talk excitedly about the times when he has come back to visit.