Before starting the demonstration, the coaches ask the audience for silence, to allow the players to concentrate and hear the bell ball. “The basis of blind football is communication,” explains a supervisor from AS Saint-Mandé blind football to the spectators. Welcome to the first approved blind football field in Paris, in the heart of the Jules-Noël sports center, near Porte de Châtillon (14th arrondissement). It was inaugurated this Thursday, in the presence of Pierre Rabadan, deputy (PS) in charge of sports and the Olympic Games at the City of Paris.
“It’s even the first field of this type in Île-de-France,” explains Anissa Ghaibi, deputy in charge of youth and sports in the 14th arrondissement. Recognizable by its Plexiglas handrails and field hockey goals, the new equipment should “serve as an example to enable the creation of other fields, particularly in the north of Paris”, aims Pierre Rabadan.
The alert email from a player to Paris town hall started it all
The City of Paris has invested 140,000 euros to equip this synthetic material adapted to disabled sports, at the end of a project launched in 2022. This is an alert email to the town hall written by Christopher Bourgeois, blind football player since 2016 , which made it possible to launch the machine. “At the start, we trained here, on a pitch that was not at all suitable,” remembers the former player of the club l’association Valentin Haüynow licensed in Précy-sur-Oise (Oise).
“There were handball cages, and especially no handrails. We therefore had to use inflatable tubes to mark off the terrain. But because of the generator, it made a lot of noise,” explains Christopher Bourgeois. However, other suitable sites already existed in France. The player therefore wrote to several city officials to ask them to think about installing a “real” field.
“It was unthinkable not to have this field before the Games”
Two years later, and just before the Paralympic Games which will begin on August 28, the stadium will serve as a training and competition pitch for the Valentin-Haüy association. A “symbol of the commitment” of the City of Paris in favor of disabled sports, according to Pierre Rabadan, which must lead to “a cultural change on disability”, added the elected official, for whom “it was unthinkable not to have this land before the Games.”
The deputy (PS) of the City of Paris in charge of sports and the Olympics, Pierre Rabadan, took part in the penalty game during a blind football demonstration. LP/AC
Anne Hidalgo’s assistant even put on the mask worn by the blind football players during the demonstration. His penalty in the top corner earned him a round of applause. And what do the players themselves think? “It’s so different from the old pitch,” rejoices Samba, 30, a player since 2014 within the Valentin-Haüy association. No more need to play with handball goals, and above all the glass handrails will allow us to train in all weathers, while being careful. »
