Michel Hidalgo, former coach of the France team, is dead

He is the one who brought the French team back into the elite of world football and offered the Blues their first international title during the European football championship organized in France in 1984. Michel Hidalgo died on March 26, at the 'old 87 years old. He died at his home in Marseille, "Naturally, from exhaustion", according to his family contacted by Franceinfo.

Player, manager, coach, he has been a key figure in French football and has left his mark on all the great successes that have shaped his history.

Player in the legendary team of Reims, then in Monaco, where he ended his very honest career, it is especially as coach of the Blues, a position he held from 1976 to 1984, that the native of Leffrinckoucke (North) March 22, 1933, wrote his legend.

Conductor of an exceptional generation, embodied by the "magic square" Platini-Giresse-Tigana-Fernandez, he ended the crossing of the desert of French football, twelve years of absence at the highest level, and above all allowed France to register its name for the first time in the charts of an international competition.

The victory of the "romantics"

"Tomorrow morning, it may be difficult … But it's a kind of novel, and there is this love story that ends with a beautiful ending. " For his last game at the head of the Blues, Michel Hidalgo could not have hoped for a more beautiful epilogue than this home success against Spain and this goal by Michel Platini, scored with the benevolent help of Arconada.

The image of the coach carried in triumph by his players on the lawn of the Parc des Princes will not erase the memory of the tragic semi-final against Germany, in Seville, two years earlier, during the World Cup 1982.

But it marks the victory of the "romantics", of which Michel Hidalgo was the embodiment, the apostle of a happy and attacking football. "I never talked to my players about the result. Never ! I always told them to think about the game, the results come from themselves, he explained to sum up his philosophy. I was a player, coach and spectator, I always had these ideas. And too bad if I pass for a poet or a nerdy! "

"He was a dreamer, Michel Platini will say about him in an interview with the Swiss newspaper Time. Michel Hidalgo himself knew how to get out of the system to create a team with players who understood the same football as him. "

Defender of footballers' rights

Football learned in the streets of Mondeville, in Calvados – where the whole family had followed the father, a metal worker – before starting their professional career in Le Havre. But football truly revealed under the orders of Albert Batteux, coach of the great team of Reims that Michel Hidalgo will join at only 21 years old, and where he will evolve from 1954 to 1957.

Most often a replacement, he will play the final of the first European Cup of Champions in 1956 against Real Madrid, and will even score the third goal from Reims (3-4 defeat).

He then contributed to the emergence of Monaco on the football scene by winning two French cups (1960 and 1963) and two French championships (1961 and 1963), before ending his playing career in 1966.

Michel Hidalgo will also have worked in defense of the rights of footballers: president of the National Union of professional footballers for five years (1964-1971), he was also at the origin of the creation of FIFPro (1966), the union international professional footballers.

"The political milieu was not mine"

He was also the unfortunate actor in one of the most unusual events in the history of French football. On May 23, 1978, the day before the departure of the French Team for Argentina, where it must play a World Cup which begins eight days later, he escapes an attempted kidnapping by disarming his attackers himself, poor thugs, who blamed the Blues for supporting the military dictatorship of Jorge Videla.

After his triumph in Euro 1984, Michel Hidalgo will become a very popular man. He refused a coaching post at Real Madrid, but also an offer from François Mitterrand to become Minister of Sports. "This political milieu was not mine, I did not feel legitimate", he will explain to justify his refusal, while expressing some regrets for not having explored a new universe and satisfied his personal curiosity.

In 1986, he left his position as national technical director and joined the Olympique de Marseille of Bernard Tapie, of which he was manager until 1991. His sentence to suspended prison in the OM accounts case will mark the end of his involvement in professional football. But he will remain a character listened to and respected. The one who rhymed beauty with efficiency.