Luca Caioli - Pogba: Updated Edition

The quickest way to trace the origins of the Pogba family is to open an atlas. Put your finger on the African continent; allow it to move west, passing Morocco, Mauritania and finally landing on the Republic of Guinea. This will save you a tiring eight hour flight from Paris to Conakry. However, this virtual journey is far from over. Use your index finger to make an arc from left to right, from the Guinean capital of almost three and a half million inhabitants, turn your back on the Atlantic Ocean to fly over the cities of Kindia and Mamou, carefully follow the borders with Sierra Leone and Liberia before reaching Guckdou, and bring your journey to an end in Nzrkor. In no time at all, you have travelled almost a thousand extra kilometres without too much trouble. There are no internal flights or railways across the country from west to east. To get there you must make it along hundreds of kilometres of red dirt tracks by 44, avoiding the ruts often concealed by the dust that flies up as bush taxis and overloaded trucks speed past. You will also need to cross towns that may not necessarily appear on your map: Banian, Kissidougou, Macenta and Srdou.

When you get to Nzrkor, the countrys third biggest town, the worst is yet to come around 40 kilometres of roads deemed unsafe, dangerous and often blocked by heavy flooding during the rainy season. Finally, after another hour and a half, a small village comes into view at the end of the road, a sort of balcony overlooking the rainforest.

Fassou Antoine Pogba Hblamou was born here, in the heart of Forested Guinea, on 27 March 1938. It was in Pla that Pauls father grew up.

In this landscape at the edge of the world that was hit hard by the Ebola virus between 2013 and 2015 (11,300 deaths in West Africa). Right in the middle of the Mount Nimba nature reserve, not far from the Ziama Massif, home to a formidable variety of flora and fauna, where more than two hundred species, such as duikers (small deer), the favourite meal of lions and leopards, abound. Its a typical African bush village. It consists of a centre with houses scattered all around. The inhabitants work in the fields; they are known in the region as Forestiers, says Alban Traquet, the only European journalist to have made the real-life journey to Pla for a report on the origins of the Pogba family for Lquipe in March 2017. Its a no mans land, one of the most remote and poorest places in the country. Nor is it a region spared from hardship: in addition to the ravages of Ebola, it is almost completely cut off from the outside world for eight months a year due to heavy rains.

Although the official language is French, Guinea is home to almost twenty dialects. Diakhank, Malink and Susu are the most widely spoken. In Pla they speak Guerz, also known as Kpelle. This language, which binds the villages 5,600 inhabitants, is shared with their close neighbours in Liberia and spoken throughout the south of Guinea, particularly in the region of the Nzrkor prefecture. It is from this dialect that one of the most famous surnames of the 21st century comes: Pogba is not their real family name, reveals Alban Traquet. They were originally known as Hblamou. The name Pogba was attributed to Pauls grandfather because he was particularly influential in the village. In the Guerz language it means reverential son, or someone who is respected and listened to by his family. Since then, the whole family has kept the name.

Fassou Antoine first arrived in Paris in the mid-1960s, when he was in his thirties. Guinea was undergoing drastic upheaval at the time. A French colony since 1891, it obtained its independence in October 1958 after opposing the referendum announced by General Charles de Gaulle, who wanted the country to be part of a new French Community. The response was scathing: in the following month, France began its withdrawal from the country, leaving the Guineans deprived of military and financial aid, as well as many civil servants, including teachers, doctors and nurses. It was at this time that Fassou Antoine packed his bags to settle in the Paris region, where he began a career in telecommunications, before becoming a teacher at a technical high school. The rather poised and discreet young man was passionate about the round ball. This passion had developed at an early age, and stayed with him over the years. He was a keen fan of the Syli, the Guinean national team, and, since arriving in France, he had been involved in the founding of the Africa Star de Paris football club, which brought the local Guinean community together until 1990.

The remoteness and inaccessibility of Pla meant that visits home to his childhood village were rare. He did return in the late 1980s, however, when he spent time with his younger brother Badjop and one of his sisters, Kb: God had not blessed my brother Fassou with children. He was living in France and was fifty, so he returned home to sacrifice a ram in the hope of finding fertility, Kb told the journalist Alban Traquet when he visited the village. He then left again for Conakry in search of a romantic relationship.

This sacrificial ceremony therefore marked the starting point for the meeting between the Christian, Fassou Antoine and the future mother of Paul Pogba, a Muslim woman in her twenties named Yeo Moriba. Like her future husband, she was from Forested Guinea, but from the village of Mabossou, located about 100 kilometres north of Pla. The daughter of a civil servant, she came from a family of well-known figures: her great uncle, Louis Lansana Beavogui was the Prime Minister of Guinea between 1972 and 1984 and even temporarily occupied the position of head of state after the death of the illustrious Skou Tour, but he was quickly overthrown and imprisoned following a military coup. There was also, to a lesser extent, her cousin, Riva Tour, who had had a brief career as a footballer in Guinea and worn the prestigious shirt of AS Kaloum Star. The Conakry club had done well for itself by winning the national league a dozen times. Yeo Moriba, a cheerful and determined young woman, also had a soft spot for the countrys number one sport, which she practised diligently. She was doing well for herself and was on the point of being named captain of the national womens team.

Despite the age difference, the couple had a number of things in common thanks to their passion for football and background in Forested Guinea. This was only the beginning, Yeo was soon expecting twins! The ram sacrifice had not been in vain. Yeo Moriba gave birth to two beautiful boys, Florentin and Mathias, on 19 August 1990. The small family would spend two years in the port city of Conakry before leaving the Guinean capital to settle permanently in France, about 30 kilometres to the south-east of Paris, in Roissy-en-Brie.

A former hunting ground with 150 hectares of forest that it shared with the neighbouring town of Torcy, the commune in Seine-et-Marne was undergoing profound change and development. The census takers had their work cut out over twenty years: the population had risen from 500 to almost 20,000 inhabitants in 1992. In other words, the wheat fields had given way to buildings of all kinds by the time the couple and their two children took possession of an apartment in the Le Bois-Briard development in a peaceful area to the north-east of the city. The family grew a year later thanks to the arrival of a third son: Paul Labile Pogba, who was born on 15 March 1993. Like all local children, he came into the world at the maternity unit in Lagny-sur-Marne hospital, about ten kilometres from his home.

Back in Guinea, the news of the birth of a new member of the Pogba family spread very quickly. Rosine, one of the maternal aunts who had also settled in the capital, would be one of the first to visit the little miracle. She remembers this of her stay in France: The twins were there and Paul was tiny. He was six months old. The day I arrived, I held him in my arms and put some big sunglasses on him for a photo, she says, showing an image of her giving a bottle to the newest member of the family, who is all smiles. I can say that he was born with success and that he had it in his blood. This was the blessing I gave to his mother.