Cesc Fabregas: Heir to King George at Arsenal

Thirty years later, Cesc Fabregas, a youthful midfield maestro of a multi-cultural Arsenal team, has never smoked a cigarette in his life, drunk beer only very occasionally, wears the trendiest clothes, respects his elders, never spent more than £6 a week on the Spanish football pools, hired a business studies teacher once a week, drives a black Audi TT with GPS and Bluetooth and adores eating fish.

But almost word for word they have shared the same ambition. 'All I wanted to do was play football,' said George, looking back with hindsight on his ebullient if erratic career, spanning Arsenal, Derby, Southampton, Nottingham Forest, Australia, America and Hong Kong.

'All I want to do is play football,' said Fabregas, in explanation of his move from Barcelona's youth team to Arsenal in 2003.

Different roots, different language, different century, shared loved. Everything and nothing has changed in those 30 years.

Training, for instance. Charlie trained at Highbury from the age of 11. An Islington schoolboy picked up by the astute Arsenal scouts as a cheeky young lad with potential.

'We used to train on a Monday and Thursday night in the old college at Highbury, behind the Clock End, on the old red ash pitch with a lot of other local lads. We did a few ball bookskills, nothing too serious. Bit of ball work and games and then we'd inevitably finish up with a minimatch. The club used to give us half a crown each for our bus fare, which was pretty decent money in those days. Otherwise we used to play football in the streets or the parks.

'We used to go over Finsbury Park, sling a couple of bags down for the goals and have a game, five or six a side. We'd meet other boys over there and play them. We didn't know them, but one way or another we'd form a game.'

A rough and ready lifestyle, all wrapped up in football. His academic work was, well, just that: academic. Days were less likely to be spent at school than playing truant, occupying himself with fags, swigs of beer and small-time gambling, hiding in the pram shed with a bunch of mates playing dice.

At the age of 15, on the advice of George Male, the Arsenal full back who played during the club's glorious spell in the 1930s, George became a Highbury apprentice. He had stood on the terraces, first with this dad, then with friends. Now he was a player of the club. It was a transformation of his dreams.

Fabregas joined Barcelona, the team he loved and supported, at the age of 10. He was already a season ticket holder, a fan of long standing like his father, grandfather and uncles. Passion for Barca ran in the family.

He never missed training and he never missed school. Days were hectic. 'I was from a small town, a fishing port north of Barcelona which was quite far out of the city.

So I had to wake up early in the morning, go to school, come back, have lunch, rest a little bit, go running, then a taxi was coming to pick up about six of us and take us to training at Barcelona. We would train at 7.30pm, finish at 9.30pm, take a taxi home again to arrive around midnight. Then I would have to do my homework, sometimes to 2am or 3am and wake up early again to go to school. It was like that for five years, really hard.

'I never did something like — how do you say? — truant. Maybe sometimes I was thinking about it but I knew I would feel bad afterwards, so I never did it. In the end I got all my exams and good grades. Now I can speak Spanish, Catalan, English and a little bit of French.' All three would prove useful at Arsenal.

George may have been a scamp, but he was never late for training. He was irrepressible but never yobbish.

The cheekiest thing he would ever do was advance menacingly on Bob Wilson, the Loughborough-trained schoolteacher in goal, and ask: 'Which way do you want the ball, left, right or through your legs.' Invariably it would go exactly as planned, to the annoyance and admiration of the exasperated Wilson.

'I was never in trouble as a schoolboy,' said Fabregas. 'I was a good student. But also I was a bit cheeky, you know. Who has ever not done anything wrong? No one is a saint.

Not even Dennis Bergkamp. When I was young, the worst thing I did with my friends was take the thing out of the tyre on a car. I don't know the name. It goes pssssst. I did that.

But I didn't steal any cars. No way. 'And, well, one day at the supermarket with my friend in Spain we were waiting outside for my friend's parents. I had a small stone and I said: "Look at your car". I threw the stone maybe 50 metres and it hit the middle of the window at the back of the car. "Clack". The window shattered. We were running and running all over the place and we said to his parents. "Hey, this guy threw a stone and then he ran away". They still don't know it was me. But sometimes I still say to my friend, "Should we tell them?" and he says, "No way".'

To read part 2 of the interview click here