50 candles for the Parisian academy
Youth football•
50! 4th November 1975 is a historic date in the history of the Paris Saint-Germain Academy.
Michel Kollarmichelkollar
In this article
On Tuesday, 4th November 1975, in Saint-Germain-en-Laye, the club's first training academy was officially inaugurated in a discreet building at 120 Avenue Foch, very different from the Campus PSG in Poissy, which opened just over two years ago.
The inauguration was attended by Pierre Mazeaud, Secretary of State for Youth and Sports, and elected officials from the City of Saint-Germain-en-Laye, who gathered for the event.
Two floors in a discreet building in the city centre and a reception area, run by a certain Pierre Alonzo, father of the future Parisian goalkeeper Jérôme, who was just a three years old at the time.
A few months earlier, several players had been recruited during a talent-spotting day in Saint-Germain-en-Laye and had to wait a few weeks in a hostel for young workers in Achères, 8 kilometres away. Several young players trained in Paris had already turned professional, but without any accommodation facilities and were housed in flats, with the club paying their rent and meals.
This first facility was a rented house with a small garden. Around ten young people were accommodated there and were able to eat on site, with the assistance of someone to do the laundry for the club's young hopefuls.
This first generation, made up of a dozen young people from the Paris region, went on to enjoy successful professional careers: François Brisson played more than 500 matches in the first division, became an international player and Olympic champion in 1984, while Jean-Marc Pilorget held the record for the number of matches played in a Parisian shirt from 1975 to 1989, with 435 official matches, a record recently broken by Marquinhos. Not to mention Thierry Morin, who had an exemplary career in Paris (171 matches from 1975 to 1985), and the late Lionel Justier, who became ‘Juju’ on 15th February 1976, during a match against Saint-Etienne after an exceptional performance at the Parc des Princes.
On 21st December 1975, a few weeks after the inauguration, the ‘four musketeers of Paris Saint-Germain’, as they were nicknamed – Morin, Pilorget, Brisson, and Justier—made their professional debut together in a match at the Parc des Princes against Stade de Reims (2-3), a successful first and a founding moment for the Parisian lads.
It's been history in the making, with the arrival of Luis Fernandez, Nicolas Anelka, Mamadou Sakho, Kingsley Coman, Presnel Kimpembe and, more recently, Warren Zaïre-Emery, who have also worn the French national team shirt after rising up through the ranks at the Academy.
With Quentin Ndjantou and Mathys Jangeal making their debuts on 28th September against Auxerre (2-0), there are now 142 players who have come through the Academy to have worn the red and blue shirt over the past 50 years.