Soccer: He was the unfamiliar face in a crowd of stars, but even in their company he stood out. On a bright morning at Bisham Abbey, as England prepared for Euro '96, the skinny young defender was showing a composure that clearly impressed colleagues with dozens of caps to their names.
He was 17-years-old, and his name was Rio Ferdinand. He was on West Ham's books, but had yet to make his first-team debut. Although he had been brought into the training group by Terry Venables simply to gain experience, his first cap was only a year-and-a-half away. And by that time people would be drawing parallels between Ferdinand's gifts and those of a trio of great ball-playing central defenders of previous eras: Bobby Moore, Franz Beckenbauer, Franco Baresi.
Justifying such comparisons on the pitch would have been difficult enough, although Ferdinand has done sufficiently well to attract transfer fees of £18 million (from West Ham to Leeds United in 2000) and £30 million (from Leeds to Manchester United two years later), the latter deal establishing a world record for a defender.
It is off the pitch, however, that his behaviour has provided a vivid contrast with those earlier paragons of professionalism.
None of them would have been so foolish as to find themselves spread across the pages of the News of the World, as Ferdinand did in the summer of 2000, accused - along with his fellow England prospects Frank Lampard and Kieron Dyer - of having group sex with a girl in a holiday hotel and videotaping the proceedings without bothering to inform the girl of the presence of a concealed camera.
The question of whether Ferdinand had anything to hide when he missed his dope test in Manchester last September will probably never receive a definitive answer. Given his increasingly mature behaviour over the last couple of seasons, one would tend to take relatively seriously his denial of using recreational drugs.
His fashion sense, however, continues to give the impression of a young man devoted to the things that a Premier League footballer's salary can buy. These would include cutting-edge clothes, such as the expensively patched and distressed denim suit in which he was photographed on Wednesday, the day before his hearing began, and the expensively braided hair-do which made its debut in front of the tribunal. At such times, when an appearance of mature sobriety might be advantageous, a young footballer's taste is not always his best friend.
Not everyone who passes judgment on Ferdinand's behaviour, however, has made the kind of journey that began in a sink estate in south-east London and landed him, only a few short years later, in a world of affluence and influence.
Twelve years after he was born on the Friary estate in Peckham, Ferdinand's St Lucia-born father left the family. His mother was left to bring up her children in straitened circumstances, and did so with a strong sense of discipline. But the Friary estate, where Damilola Taylor lived at the time of his murder, was a place with plenty of temptations for a teenager.
At the Camelot primary school and later at Blackheath's Bluecoat School, where another murdered boy, Stephen Lawrence, was educated, he excelled at football and made it clear that he hoped to follow the path of his cousin Les Ferdinand, the Queens Park Rangers and England centre-forward. His performances with Blackheath District and Bloomfield Athletics brought him to the attention of West Ham, with whom he signed full professional forms at 17. Among his first acts was to buy his mother a five-bedroom house in Kent and get her out of the Friary estate.
The first of his two big transfers, to Leeds, was seen as inevitable, and when he assumed the captaincy of David O'Leary's team it looked as though the choice of destination had been a wise one. But life at Elland Road had already begun to turn sour when, soon after Ferdinand returned from the World Cup two years ago, Alex Ferguson made an offer Leeds could not turn away.
With hindsight, Ferguson's bid looks as excessive as Ferdinand's £70,000-a-week remuneration. But the market was at its height in the summer of 2002, and the Old Trafford club needed a young centre-half of proven international class.
Years earlier, when he tried for a place in the England Under-15 side, Ferdinand was sent away with a report that read: "One-paced. Lacks concentration. Good attitude. Mark: B." Viewed objectively, that judgment still seems sound.
A centre-back who likes to make early interceptions and to carry the ball out of defence will always expose himself to the possibility of making a highly visible and potentially expensive mistake, and Ferdinand is no exception. But with his 25th birthday only a few weeks behind him, there is still time for him to learn plenty of lessons, about life as well as football.
