It was 7pm on a June evening in 2010 when Francois Keller heard the rabble approaching his house, making the sort of noise that eight hours later would wake his neighbours.

Two years had passed since the ‘trauma’ of Morgan Schneiderlin’s departure for Southampton but, unannounced, Keller’s golden boy was back in Strasbourg with a bag of meat and a group of former team-mates.

‘I heard this singing in the street and I was thinking, “What is this?” But then I thought, “I know these voices”,’ says Keller, once Schneiderlin’s coach at Strasbourg.

He is one of the key figures in the background of a young prospect who learned English by watching Only Fools and Horses in Southampton and who returns to St Mary’s as a £25million man keen to prove he can be the long-term kingpin in Manchester United’s midfield.

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Morgan Schneiderlin makes his return to the south coast following his £25m summer move to United

Schniederlin and fellow countryman Anthony Martial enter the Phillips Stadion for a training session

Keller will watch the next phase with more interest than most.

‘When I opened the door that evening, Morgan is grinning with about seven guys from his old youth team,’ he recalls. ‘I hadn’t seen them for a long time but they turned up with food saying it was time for a barbecue.

‘They were there until 3am when they left just as loud as when they came.

‘They woke my neighbours. Morgan and the boys came back the next year and the next. He has a very big heart — whenever I think of Morgan, I smile.’

During our chat at the home of Racing Club Strasbourg, Keller smiles a lot. He was coach at this faded club in north-eastern France, where Arsene Wenger ended his playing days 33 years ago.

It was Strasbourg who spotted Schneiderlin as a shy local six-year-old and raised him for the next 12 years. He was marketed as the ‘club’s child’ for their centenary celebrations in 2006, a teenager who lived on campus until the rules were bent to let him rent a flat. He kept the shutters drawn for six months to thwart Keller’s spy.

Keller remembers it all, from the protesting boy in a senior dressing room for the first time to the devastation that swept the town when Strasbourg went bust and he was sold to Southampton in 2008, aged 18, to pay the bills.

‘Look at him now,’ says Keller. ‘Everyone who knows him knows what he has done to get here.’

It is something an old school teacher, friends and the villagers of Zellwiller will agree on, even if they mostly wished Wenger had won the race to sign him.

Schneiderlin is pictured during his days at local club Strasbourg, whom he left for Southampton in 2008

Francois Keller has closely followed Schneiderlin's career and spoke fondly of his former player

Eric Cantona sold the point that here in Alsace, the hop farmers are more famous than Britain’s footballers. He might be right, but in Zellwiller, Schneiderlin redresses the balance.

‘My friend calls this “Schneiderlin’s town”,’ says Lucienne Ebel. She runs one of the village’s two pubs and has known the Schneiderlins for more than 60 years.

The population of this village of beautiful brightly-painted houses is roughly 750 and everyone knows his neighbour’s business.

It was here, 20 miles from Strasbourg, where Schneiderlin grew up, the eldest of two children, with mother Caroline and father Albert. Caroline was a carer for the elderly and Albert a roofer, like his own father, Gerard. His family still live in the village.

‘Gerard founded the football team here,’ says Martial Helbert, current president of Reunis, the amateur club created in 1968 by Schneiderlin’s grandfather.

‘I played football with Morgan’s father — a very good goalkeeper. He and Morgan played football in the garden every minute.’

From the start, Schneiderlin was a defensive midfielder. He was one of the many who wanted a Brazil shirt after the 1994 World Cup but among the few whose kit carried the name Dunga.

‘When Morgan comes back he is so humble,’ Helbert says. ‘He comes by train. He has a big car but he would never show off. His mother would not allow it.

‘We opened a clubhouse a couple of years ago and Morgan came for support.’

Inside that clubhouse is the kit Schneiderlin wore during an Under 18 international for France in 2007. When he played at the World Cup last summer, 350 people from surrounding villages crammed into the clubhouse to watch on TV. They had to call for more chairs.

Schneiderlin has completed a remarkable rise from Ligues 2 and 1 to League One and the Premier League

The Frenchman learnt English by repeatedly watching classic BBC comedy Only Fools and Horses

A picture in the corridor at Strasbourg’s Centre de Formacion (training centre) says Schneiderlin was six when he was placed on a path that has already visited the Barclays Premier League and World Cup. His father took him to a club open day in 1996 and Strasbourg liked what they saw. At the centre Schneiderlin met Thierry Brand, a coach at the academy and later his PE teacher at Jean Monnet high school in Strasbourg.

‘He was eight, a nice, shy boy — not very strong but charming, intelligent,’ Brand says. ‘He was so hard working and never complained.

‘He was good at volleyball, table tennis, handball... but at football he was so natural — always playing with guys in the year above.’

Keller, a striker at Fulham in the 1990s, oversaw Schneiderlin’s development.

‘His progress was perfect,’ Keller says. ‘He played for France in all age groups. His passion was like Thierry Henry’s.’

Schneiderlin slept at the academy for more than a year, sharing a room with Thomas Zerbini, who now plays in the French fourth division. ‘We had a policy that academy players could not move into flats until they were 18,’ Keller says. ‘But we let Thomas and Morgan get one at 17. They were so mature.’

By that point, Schneiderlin had already become the youngest professional in the club’s history, signing a contract before he was 17.

‘After Morgan moved into the flat I wanted to watch him,’ Keller says. ‘For six months he had the blinds down — they knew one of the club’s staff was in the next building and he’d tell me what time the TV was on, what time they are going to bed. Morgan is smart.

‘Another time I was driving home and saw Thomas and Morgan by the road. They had locked themselves out. I forced the door and they ran inside to hide a huge pile of pizza boxes. He was not an angel but he was not behaving badly.’

Keller gave Schneiderlin his first experience of senior football for the reserve team in 2006.

‘I had only 11 players, no subs, against Beauvais, the champions of the fourth division,’ says Keller. ‘They were men and Morgan was 16 — I put him in defence.

‘We lost 7-0. I remember Morgan at half-time, saying, “Coach, excuse me, but I am not a defender”.

‘I said, “I know this, Morgan, but it is quite a small squad today”. He went back out and tried so hard.’

Schneiderlin scores against Liverpool for Southampton and will return to St Mary's this weekend

The midfielder wheels away after netting another goal, this time against West Ham last year

That October, the ‘club’s child’ was on posters all over the city as he was handed a premature debut, aged 16, in Strasbourg’s centenary match. He was given a shirt with the number 100.

‘He said to his friends, “I’m like a clown today”,’ Keller recalls. ‘He was used a little for the publicity.’

Over the next 18 months, Schneiderlin was integrated into the first team, but Strasbourg were relegated in 2008 and, financially crippled, sold him to Southampton for £1.2m that summer.

The club were liquidated and reinstated in the fifth tier before climbing back to the third division, where they sit today.

‘We always knew he would go to a bigger club, but we and Morgan thought he would play many games for us,’ Keller says. ‘When he was sold, it was a horrible trauma.

‘We had faith he would do well in England with a club that looks after young players — but wow!’

For more than two years Wenger received detailed reports on Schneiderlin.

His curiosity centred on how Schneiderlin would cope in the top flight having spent four seasons and 136 games with Southampton bouncing between League One and the Championship.

The unexpected emergence of Francis Coquelin, and United’s relatively late interest, killed what was believed to be a certain move to Arsenal.

United’s eureka moment came on January 11 when Southampton beat United 1-0 at Old Trafford. They saw the multi-faceted best of a player who made more tackles (355) than any other in the Premier League over the past three completed seasons. He also sits near the top of charts for interceptions and passing accuracy (90 per cent). United think they have snared someone special.

People inside football were aware that Schneiderlin hired a nutritionist to shave off 4kg in summer 2011; and that he refused to subscribe to French TV channels in his first two years at Southampton so he could learn English quicker. Only Fools was his favourite show.

Like other tales, from Zellwiller and beyond, these anecdotes back up Keller’s view of a ‘personality desperate to succeed’. To succeed in the formidable challenge he has set himself at United, he needs to go up another gear.