This was around 2004-2006 or so. I met him in War playing "noon time basketball." I had played with him a few times, and we frequently seemed to get matched up. I was around 30 then, and he's about 10 years older than me. He was obviously a good athlete, although not extremely skilled as a basketball player. We got chatting between games, and I think I asked him what he did here. He mentioned that he and his wife were coaches, etc. I must have asked him where he played, and he mentioned that he went to Boston University and that he played there (but left out the part that he played in the World Cup! I think he was the first, and maybe only, foreign player to graduate from a US University and then play in the World Cup).

I had played basketball with him a bunch of times, and we talked soccer quite a bit. I knew Oliver Weiss and Briz, and I had some of the VT players in class before. Finally one day, I put his name in google, and the image below from the '94 World Cup popped right up. I couldn't believe it. The next day, I tried my best not to go all "Chris Farley with Paul McCartney" on him to mixed success. He was incredibly humble, and he shared all kinds of stories (e.g. he and Maradona went through the drug testing together after that match - that's when Maradona got popped). We each had kids around the exact same time, and we talked often about our kids. Overall, he was just a super nice guy.

They moved to Arizona, and he was coaching teenage girls at a local club out there before he went to Chelsea with Avram Grant. I couldn't believe his rise at Chelsea, and he survived there through so many coaches. He obviously became a very trusted man to Abramovich. It was surreal to think that this guy that I would play hoops with at War (and see riding his bike around campus in the rain) was such a big part of Chelsea just a few years later.