Picture courtesy of Peter McCullough
It was 94 Fahrenheit in the shade and some of the boys were wilting. I got in a wee chat with Darren Fletcher who had begun to wilt before the end of a rough-tackling scrimmage. “I can’t believe the heat,” he kept saying. “In all my time in football, I’ve never known such heat.” He has a very gentle Scottish accent and was in absolute awe of the local architecture. We both had our eyes glued to a long muscled Dimitar Berbatov as he juggled the ball before passing.
“Do you think…?” I was about to say something about Berbatov still being with the club at the season opener.
“He’s brilliant and he’s no going nowhere,” Fletcher said.
I was also very impressed by Edwin Van Der Saar. He took the time to sign for hundreds of people and was very curious about all the children, asking them questions about themselves and whether they played soccer. Someone asked about Steklenburg’s performance in his place at the World Cup and the great one smiled and shrugged.
“Do you think you might end up as goalie coach at Ajax or United?” I asked.
He winked at me. “Not Ajax. Ajax are cheap.”
