‘Where do you want to go?’ Victoria smiled.
‘Um. Where would you like to go?’
We pulled out into the road, neither of us having a clue where we were heading but both of us sure we wanted to go there together. I knew her manager, Simon, was really nervous about the Girls and their boys. Anything that was going on in Spiceworld was all over the papers almost before it had happened in those days. I didn’t want to be sharing her company with anybody anyway, to be honest. So we drove around looking for somewhere that would be private enough.
The other reason for wanting to be out of the way was that she had a boyfriend, Stuart, who she was still seeing. He was off skiing in France with her dad at the time. Victoria was straight with me about it from the off; like me, she tries to be completely honest with people. We’d only just met. She didn’t want us to muck each other around, or anyone else for that matter. There was just one difficult moment and that was that night: Stuart called Victoria on her mobile while we were driving around together. I was single, of course, but I told Victoria all about the important girlfriends in my past: Deana, who I’d been with for three years when I first moved up to Manchester and who had been so important to me as a teenager away from home for the first time; and Helen, who I’d been seeing for eighteen months more recently and who’d stepped away when people started making a fuss about this young lad from London making a name for himself at United.
Victoria told me about Stuart, and about a lot else besides, as we drove past crowded pub after crowded pub around North-east London. When you meet The One, there’s a lot of catching up to do. We made a good start that night and, an hour or so later, I had my good idea:
‘I know this little Chinese.’
There was a restaurant in Chingford that I’d visited with Mum and Dad. Nothing spectacular but it had one big thing to recommend it: there was never anyone else in the place whenever I’d eaten there. I gave Victoria directions; we parked up and went in. Perfect: it was absolutely deserted. We sat down and I ordered:
‘Could we have a Coke and a Diet Coke, please?’
The lady who ran the restaurant looked at us. Oh, the last of the big spenders. She didn’t have a clue who we were. I could understand her not recognising me, but Victoria? It was a little world of its own, that Chinese.
‘You can’t have drink unless you eat meal.’
I said we just wanted a quiet drink. She wasn’t having any of it:
‘This is an exclusive restaurant, you know.’
We were getting chucked out. I offered to pay for a full meal if we could just have our drinks but it was too late for that and, suddenly, at eleven o’clock at night, we were standing back out in the street. It was time for Victoria to have her good idea:
‘We could go round to my friend’s house.’
My luck: the friend was Melanie Chisholm. What had I got myself into? I was out with one Spice Girl and now we were going round to another one’s house. How much more nervous could a lad get on a first date?
When we arrived, Melanie was in her pyjamas and had got out of bed to answer the door. The moment we walked in, my heart sank. There was this big Liverpool FC poster up on the door. I’m not ready for this.
I sat down and Victoria and Melanie went missing for ten minutes. I think they were in the kitchen chatting while I was left on my own on the sofa in the lounge like a complete lemon. By the time they came back, I’d wound myself up all over again. It was like being at a really awkward tea party. Victoria was nervous too, I think. We sat at the two ends of the sofa as if we hadn’t been properly introduced. They chatted. I sat and listened. I’m not sure I actually said a word the whole time we were there.
An hour or two later we were back in Victoria’s MG, continuing our tour of the M25’s beauty spots. I remember she drove us past her parents’ house at one point, maybe just so that I’d know where to find her. Eventually, in the early hours of the morning, we were back at the Castle. The Spice Girls were off to the States the following day and we had to say our goodbyes. I got back in my car and waved. Victoria promised to call when she got to New York. Not exactly the most romantic of first dates, but I felt like it couldn’t have been better. I’d known that all we needed was to meet. Love at first sight? No, it was happening quicker than that.
So was everything else. That 1996/97 season United won the League again and got closer than we ever had before to what I think had become the gaffer’s real ambition: winning the European Cup again for the club. It’s a bit like learning football all over again, getting to grips with playing the best teams in Europe. There have been one or two teams that United seem to have played over and over again in the last ten years. I’m thinking of Barcelona, Juventus and Bayern Munich, in particular. It’s almost as if you have to meet those teams in the Champions League just to find out what kind of progress you’ve made on the European stage.
In the autumn of 1996, I remember we got turned over twice by Juve, 1–0 both home and away. However much of the ball we had, we just couldn’t work out how to beat them. We still qualified from the first group stage, though, and it felt for a while like we were on our way. There was one amazing night at Old Trafford when we beat Porto 4–0 in the quarter-finals. That was the start, I think, of people taking United seriously as a team that could win the competition. That year, we went into the semi-finals against Borussia Dortmund believing we had a real chance. Instead, they mugged us: like so many German teams, they were very organised and knew exactly what they were doing. They defended really well; I remember their left-back, Jorg Heinrich, was about as difficult to play against over those two games as any player I’ve ever faced. After they beat us 1–0 in the first leg in Dortmund, we fancied our chances, but they repeated that score line at Old Trafford and then went on to beat Juventus in the final.
Those games against Dortmund were real killers but, otherwise, things couldn’t have gone much better for me that season. I found myself wearing the number 10 shirt, playing almost every game, and scoring the kind of goals I used to when playing for Ridgeway Rovers: like the one from beyond the halfway line at Selhurst Park against Wimbledon, or the volley against Chelsea at Stamford Bridge on the day I first met Victoria. To top it all off, I was voted PFA Young Player of the Year. When the opponents you’re up against in the Premiership every week give you that kind of recognition, you can’t help but feel like you’re doing something right.
It was a great time to be a United player. We had the best manager in the country, and it definitely felt like we had the best number two as well. I know the gaffer said some uncomplimentary things about Brian Kidd after he left Old Trafford to take the manager’s job at Blackburn Rovers, but I thought they made a great team. Kiddo’s a fantastic coach – just ask anybody who’s ever worked with him – and I think, at United especially, he did a great job working between the boss and the players. Everybody in the dressing room thought that Brian was ‘one of us’. After training or after a game, no one needed to watch what they were saying or doing. Kiddo would be having a laugh along with the rest.
He knew when it was time to be serious too. We worked really hard in training but you never noticed it with Kiddo because he made sure every session was different: it stopped us ever getting bored and the new routines kept players fresh. Scholesy and Nicky Butt and the Nevilles had known Brian even longer than I had: he was United through and through. I think that’s part of the reason he handled relationships between people at the club so well. I know I’m not the only one who, at some point during his time at Old Trafford, had to thank him for defusing a confrontation with the gaffer. He never went against the manager, or tried to undermine him in any way, but I always felt like he looked out for us players. It made for a really happy dressing room.
It was also a pretty successful dressing room. We were disappointed to miss out in Europe but, in May 1997, winning the Premiership for the second year running was a big achievement in itself. In the end, we finished seven points clear, but it was more than just a one- or two-horse race. Liverpool, Newcastle and Arsenal all had a go at different times in the season. We won