Michel Hidalgo

Michel François Hidalgo (22 March 1933 – 26 March 2020) was a French professional footballer and manager. He was the head coach of the France national team from March 27, 1976 to June 27, 1984, with whom he won the UEFA Euro 1984 on home soil, also reaching the semi-finals of the 1982 FIFA World Cup.

Michel François Hidalgo was born on 22 March 1933 in Leffrinckoucke, department of Nord. Michel and his twin brother Serge were born to a Spanish-born father, metal worker employed at the metallurgical company of Normandy ("société métallurgique de Normandie") and communist militant too, and a Parisian mother, both living in north-western France, and after 1935 grew up at Mondeville-Colombelle, Calvados, in Normandy. In 1940 the Hidalgo family is evacuated as many working families in metallurgy, in order to flee the Wehrmacht advance. His family returns to settle in 1946 in the devasted vicinity of Caen near the same metallurgical factory, where the father still works and the twins started playing football in a patronage club created, from odds and ends, by the Catholic priest, Father Martin, a football lover.. The promising junior player is recruited by "Union Sportive Normande", amateur workers' club, associated with the metallurgical factory where his father works.

Center forward, wing forward, or sometimes, to preserve a result, libero before being midfielder, Hidalgo was champion of Normandie Juniors in 1952 with US Normande, before signing up to Le Havre's books for two s…