Watching the guy was a real inspiration for a whole generation of footballers.

In 20 years' time our kids will either want to dribble past 11 players or shoot into row Z from 70 yards.

Yeah but I'd imagine with the way the kids are coached and the success of the Spanish national team they'll all want to emulate Xavi!

I think the problem we have here is that kids aren't allowed to try and emulate the foreign stars as they're always told they aren't as good as them at it.

So they make them play an all action style and then the media tell them twenty years later that they ARE better than them.

Yeah, bit of a predicament over there, but I do think things are slowly changing. Problem is that the hype over any properly talented young kid is knocked out of all proportion. I actually think that one of the reasons for our recent success is that the big team's academies really try to keep the kids' heads screwed on; the clubs will ban them several games if they're doing badly at school and such stuff.

Yeah that's true. Also in England a lot of chavvy caaant seem to make it as footballers so they've got a chip on their shoulder and think they've already made it after getting a bit of hype.

Yeah, that's what I was getting at. You still have cases here of course, but clubs generally try to control it as much as possible.