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 at this week's front pages featuring his son Paul, and contemplating life as the father 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 ($150 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."
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Pogba's record Man Utd transfer
Manchester United re-sign France midfielder Paul Pogba for a world-record $151m making it the biggest transfer deal in history.
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 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 good. He was four, and he always played with boys who were older than him."
In his living room are pictures of Paul with his elder brothers, twins Mathias and Florentin, who play at Partick Thistle and Saint-Etienne respectively and are two years his senior. There is a picture of the trio at Christmas 1998 sitting in Santa's grotto. Pictures of the brothers in the kit of US Roissy are afforded equal prominence on their father's shelves.
Fassou is 78 and came to Paris from Guinea at the age of 30. He worked in telecommunications. He played football in Guinea and when he came to Paris, although there were fewer opportunities then.
"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 learnt 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. At Residence la Renardiere [the estate the Pogba family lived on] every kid plays football all day, so he always had a game to play in. Even then he wanted to be a professional footballer."
For a boy in Renardiere, there is only one place to go for 11-a-side football. From the top of the tower blocks of Renardiere you can see the small stand and pitch of the Stade Paul Bessuard, home to US Roissy, the little football club where dreams come true.
Past the athletics club office at the Stade Paul Bessuard, to a door that says "Bureau Football", you will find Nicolas Moressée, 40, treasurer of US Roissy and under-17s coach. He is a friendly man who wears a Manchester United shirt. "You are here to talk about Paul?" he says, "then you had better come in here and see this." It is a small office, shelves full of trophies, a strict player "code du sportif" on the wall and a washing machine with damp kit spilling out of the open door. On the wall, framed professional shirts of the Pogba brothers, as well as one from another old boy, Nicolas Isimat-Mirin, of PSV Eindhoven.
At the centre of the wall is one of Paul's Juventus shirts, signed with the message, "For my first dream club - Roissy-en-Brie".
"Paul comes back to visit a lot," Moressee says. "He was here on Sunday". Sunday? One day before he flew to Manchester for his medical? "Yes". What was he doing? "What he always does, playing football with his mates."
As treasurer, Moressee is waiting to hear the good news about the payment Roissy will receive for Pogba's transfer. Under Fifa rules, any club who develop a player at 12 or above are entitled to 0.25 per cent of his transfer fees for each year they coached him. Paul was at Roissy from six to 13 and the club could be due as much as €400,000 ($579,000). Given that their annual budget for the 30 teams they run is €60,000 ($87,000), this is enormous.
Brahim Tlili, 37, a civil servant by day and coach of US Roissy Under-19s by evening, turns up on his bike. He knows the Pogba boys well. "We always could see Paul was special," he says. "He was amazing on the pitch. He was always quite an eccentric boy. Any time someone put music on, Paul would be dancing.
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"I wasn't surprised he went back to Manchester. He was always saying it was like his second home. When he first left [in 2012] he was really sad. It wasn't what he wanted to do."
Tlili finds a picture of Paul with his Roissy team-mates lined up at the Stade de France, playing before a French Cup final. "These four, Mamadou, Habib, Nabil and Ounoussou, are still his best friends," he says, "they all went on holiday with him to LA this summer. Hang on, I'll give Nabil a call and tell him to come over to meet you."
Nabil Aloulou, 23, was the centre-back in the teams Paul played in and now plays for the senior side. He is a sports teacher. "Paul wasn't much different from now," he says when he arrives. "He has kept the same character."
There is one more place to go to understand the factors that shaped Pogba, and that is his true home turf: Residence la Renardiere, the housing estate a short walk from Stade Paul Bessuard. It was there 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. 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. Playing football.
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 all day. Most people here, explains Ahmed Diawara, 16, are first or second generation immigrants from central Africa. His family originate from Mali. The family of his friend, Boubacan Dioumanera, 16, are from Senegal. The Pogbas were from Guinea.
"I have played football with him a bit," Ahmed says. "You wouldn't believe his dribbling skills. All these little kids chasing around after him trying to tackle him and they couldn't get the ball off him."
It is not so unbelievable that Renardiere could produce a footballer like Paul. It is the perfect crucible for raw talent: scores of kids playing football day and night, safe and happy. As for the fee, it is hard for anyone to put into words what that means. Ahmed is more impressed that when a few of them hired an indoor five-a-side court, Paul turned up and they got the court free for an extra hour.
Ahmed says that most people from Renardiere work in restaurants in Paris or as plumbers and electricians. As the evening draws in people are coming home from work. Some of the men will go over to Stade Paul Bessuard for senior pre-season training.
As the players come in to change for training, each of them pops into the Bureau Football and shakes the hands of Brahim Tlili and his coaches as well as the reporter and photographer from London. It is a little tradition and will have been just the same for their most famous son. Paul Pogba might be an uncommon talent, but you only need to spend a day in his home town to know that he had the sort of solid start in life every great footballer would wish for.
The Telegraph, London
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