Many years ago I was in the company of David Platt in Rome. There was a big Champions League game taking place and Platt was in town as a pundit.
On the way to dinner, Platt was stopped in the street a number of times. Handshakes, autographs, slaps on the back. Selfies weren’t a thing back then, thankfully.
It had been 15 years since Platt had played in Serie A and it hadn’t been in Rome. Bari, Juventus and Sampdoria had been his clubs in the mid-1990s.
But that didn’t seem to matter because to the football folk of the Italian capital, Platt was a reminder of what their game had once been.