Soccer: Sex scandal hangs over Les Bleus' poster boy

Any Channel seafarer landing in Boulogne-sur-Mer this month - in fact anyone travelling anywhere near to the town - will be confronted by a giant poster of a frowning, unshaven, young man.

He stares across the harbour to the offices of the "humane shipwreck society" and the Nausicaa aquarium and oceanic study centre with an unsmiling expression of puzzlement or suspicion.

It is not a pretty picture but it could have been much worse.

Madeleine, 56, came to the Boulogne quayside with her husband and son to photograph the giant photograph.

"Luckily, they've shown the right hand profile of his face," she said. "You don't see his scars that way."

The young man in the giant portrait, 27m-high and 30m-wide, visible from the Paris autoroute 3km to the east, is Franck Bilal Yusuf Mohammed Ribery, born in April 1983 in a troubled estate in Boulogne-sur-Mer.

Ribery is a local hero and should be a national hero.

France's hopes of winning the football World Cup in South Africa this month and next rest mostly at Ribery's feet.

He is the most talented player, as winger, or striker, or playmaker, in the French squad.

The decision by Nike, the sportswear company, to erect a giant portrait of Ribery in Boulogne follows the company's erection of a slightly smaller poster of Zinedine Zidane, local hero and global superstar, at Marseilles before the 2002 World Cup.

The Zidane picture became an icon.

The giant portrait of Ribery's head - like the unfortunate incident with Thierry Henry's hand in the qualifying play-off game with Ireland in November - has come to symbolise the ambivalent feelings of many French people towards Les Bleus, their national football team.

Zidane, now retired, is a handsome man who looks rather like Mr Spock from Star Trek.

Ribery, whose face was shattered in a car crash when he was 2 years old, is not an obvious candidate for a giant blow-up photograph. When he played for Galatasaray in Turkey, the local fans, who loved him dearly, called him Scarface.

However, that does not explain why the giant portrait in Boulogne-sur-Mer is controversial.

Ribery, supposedly a home-loving, family man and devout converted Muslim, is one of three France footballers under investigation for visiting an "under-age", high-price prostitute in a bar just off the Champs-Elysees in Paris.

Zahia, who has sold her story to a French magazine, was not under the age of sexual consent. She was 17 when she was offered to Ribery by some of his teammates as a "birthday present".

Under French law it is illegal to pay for sex with a girl under the age of 18. Zahia has told investigators that she lied to Ribery and the others about her age. The footballers are therefore unlikely to be prosecuted.

All the same, the revelations have soured an already difficult relationship between the French public and its under-performing national football team.

Last month, the regional council for Nord-Pas de Calais withdrew its permission for the giant Ribery portrait to be built over the remains of a wartime German bunker in Boulogne Harbour.

The Socialist Mayor of Boulogne-sur-Mer, Frederic Cuvillier, said the attempt to ban the giant poster was "ridiculous and shocking". Nothing had been proved against Ribery. The accusations were just "rumours and random news items".

Last week, Cuvillier triumphed. The regional council relented and nine rock-climbers were hired to erect the giant photograph. "No one ever mentioned Boulogne-sur-Mer before, even on the TV weather forecast," the Mayor said. "Now everyone knows where we are."

Wahiba Ribery - of Algerian origin but born in Boulogne - was Ribery's childhood sweetheart. He converted to Islam, and took on several new Islamic first names, after they married in 2004. They have two children.

Ribery lived as a child in the troubled Chemin-Vert estate on the hill above Boulogne. His maternal language is not classical French but the northern patois called "ch'ti", a mixture of French, Picard and Flemish.

Ribery often returns to Chemin-Vert and, according to locals, is never empty-handed. He always brings football shirts, boots and match tickets for local kids and youths. He earns €8 million a year and is said to be generous.

When asked about the poster, two 15-year-old boys on the seafront in Boulogne, Joey and Joevil, say they like it. "He was a kid who came from a bad estate and people wrote him off," says Joey. "But in the end he made it big. Best of all, he escaped from Boulogne."

- INDEPENDENT