Champigny-sur-Marne (AFP)

They are the same age, grew up in the same suburbs of Paris and meet on Friday in the final of the CAN: Champouy-sur-Marne, we follow with pride Aliou Cissé and Djamel Belmadi, the children of the city become breeders of Senegal and from Algeria.

"It's an irony of the extraordinary fate of being together, we two children of Champigny", said Thursday at a press conference in Cairo, Djamel Belmadi, head of the Fennecs: "It has a special taste" .

A special taste also for the Campinois, who will be in front of the television Friday evening to see Belmadi and Cissé shake hands on the lawn before the start of the final. "Everyone is aware, it's a lot of pride for the city," smiles Philippe Sudre, deputy mayor in charge of sports policies.

Djamel Belmadi and Aliou Cissé were both born in 1976, one day apart. The first in Champigny, the second in Senegal before landing with his mother in the southeastern city of the Paris region at the age of nine.

That's when Mehdy Bouguerra met him. "With Aliou, we were in the same college, in the same team of football and handball," said one who is now president of the football club Champigny.

"He already had his (dread) locks, they were shorter at the time," he recalls. "He was a very mature, well-posed man who always spoke correctly, always well dressed with a little shirt and pants, while at that age we were all jogging," he laughs.

"Discreet", who did not "hang out" except with his girlfriend, he "knew what he wanted, he was determined to become pro in the sport," he says.

- Belmadi, "here is a name" -

"Discreet", "serious", "determined": the words that come back to define the Algerian coach are a bit the same.

Fernando Araujo, now a baker in Champigny and who played a lot with Belmadi, remembers a leader, "someone who pushed us". Monga Mazo Esele, who lived next to this "big neighborhood", remembers a "dribbler": "he liked to put hooks to everyone," he amuses himself.

Cisse was playing in a club in Champigny, Belmadi in another. Both "thoroughly" in football, they have never crossed children.

Later, Belmadi left to train at Paris SG, Cissé in Lille. If they will never play in the same team, they will find themselves on the grounds of France, which they skimmed for nearly ten years.

At Champigny, they are little to remember the passage of Cisse, who has not kept a tie in the city.

Belmadi on the other hand, "here is a name," says Mahamadou Coulibaly, comedian from the Bois-l'Abbé city, as the Algerian coach whose part of the family still lives in Champigny, and who regularly goes there. .

At the foot of the towers, he points to the bar in which the Belmadi family lived. Farther away, at a window, hang the Senegalese and Algerian flags.

Demba, 43, stops hearing the name of Belmadi. They were in college together, and Demba is torn for Friday: "Man, it's Djamel ... But I'm Senegalese, me!"

© 2019 AFP