Jœuf (France) (AFP)

A sloping street to play, a garage door as a goal, a "Platini sports complex" on the heights ... Michel Platini keeps an unwavering link with Joeuf (Meurthe-et-Moselle), where the triple Ballon d'Or won worn out his first crampons and experienced his "happy years".

At the dawn of the 1960s, Michel, then an altar boy, was "five, six" and already came regularly to the stadium with Aldo, his father who looked after the young people.

"We gave him a ball and he left to play with it," recalls Michel Keff, 72, who later played alongside the idol.

At the center of this working-class town, whose golden age has passed with the disappearance of the iron and steel industry and mines, the Café des Sports which belonged to Michel's grandparents is today the property of a fan posted by ... Zinedine Zidane.

But "at the time, it was part of Italy," recalls Michel Platini, whose family is originally from Piedmont.

A café with "a family atmosphere", where grandfather's card games were always great moments.

"If he did not win, he could kill the person in front! He taught me to cheat! But in football, I did not need to cheat to win", smiles the former N.10 of the Blues .

In this world that Platini describes to AFP as his "happy years", there were the first matches.

At the stadium or in front of his parents' house, and the one almost opposite his friend Frédéric Bragard, his five-year-old younger.

- "The real football" -

"We made goals with clothes. Michel, + the big +, because he was the oldest, took the two worst and we played against the rest of the world. But he won", remembers with emotion Fred Bragard, whose the mother Marie-Jo then treated "the stomachs and ailments" of the teenagers "because the street, that could hurt".

The dead end was sloping.

And "Michel did not like to run for the ball. He sent someone in his place," says Fred.

The wooden garage door of the Platini house could also bear witness to Michel's multiple skylight shots.

"Platini's skill in the free kick is family-friendly. Aldo was already very good at this exercise," said Michel Keff.

At the edge of the Orne, the Sainte-Anne stadium, that of the first matches, was razed and replaced by a leisure center.

But there are still memories of "fabulous matches, sometimes with 1,000 people": "it was real football, where the whole family comes to support the kids of the country", remembers Platini with nostalgia.

There are also the imprints of the first exploits.

One among others: in 1971-1972, a hat-trick against neighbor Audun-le-Tiche (4-1) and as a bonus the title of top scorer in the Promotion d'Honneur (5th level).

"He started from midfield and dribbled past the defense. He had the talent. We were in need," said Gérard Keff, 74.

"I scored 13 goals and made an assist," Michel will one day tell his mother after a 14-0 victory in the school playground.

- Kubala and Pythagoras -

In Joeuf (6,500 inhabitants), we are supporters of Metz, located about thirty kilometers away.

Michel and his father Aldo, football educator and math teacher in an establishment located in the locality of Sainte-Ségolène in Froidcul, often frequented the Saint-Symphorien stadium.

A technical gesture that he admired there as a child marked him for life.

"(Laszlo) Kubala receives a ball from the right and gives it directly to the left without looking. Me, I was on the ass, I did not understand. I told my dad + what is he How did he give? + And he said + eh bah, he saw before +. It traumatized me. There is that and the Pythagorean theorem that traumatized me, "Platini jokes.

"Seeing before" then became her "obsession" and "allowed her to anticipate a lot of things": "while going to school, I went to the football field, I stopped, I closed my eyes and I was trying to find out where all the players were. "

When he left Joeuf in 1972, Platini saw himself as Messin.

However, a failure of the spirometer test, to measure his lung capacity, upsets his plans.

"He knew how to play but not breathe," says Gérard Keff ironically.

Not enough to stop Platini, who goes to Nancy then Saint-Etienne, before triumphing at Juventus Turin.

"But he never forgot where he came from", concludes the mayor of Joeuf, André Corzani.

© 2021 AFP