'We went to the shower, which was the watering hole across the road': Tim Cahill opens up on his Samoan roots, playing with David Weir and Duncan Ferguson at Everton and making kids' dreams come true as an author

There is a symmetry to Tim Cahill’s life that befits a character who has made his fame and fortune by circumnavigating the globe.

It is a factor that can crudely be multiplied to the power of four. He is 40, played at four World Cups, for clubs on four continents, and has four children.

The key to the Australian midfielder, however, lies in a single unbreakable thread that stretches back more than three decades to Samoa and has never been frayed by distance, disaffection or occasional defeat. This debt to the past is inked, too, on his body.