Milton Keynes, 1 August, 2008


It's 8am and Roberto Di Mateo had just turned up for work. As it happens, so have I. In fact, I've been loitering in the car park of the ludicrously named mk:stadium for the best part of half an hour, like some '50s homosexual wondering whether to go into a public toilet. I thought I'd have been delayed by the Milton Keynes rush hour. I know now that Milton Keynes doesn't have a rush hour.
Di Matteo looks fantastic. Not an ounce of fat on him, skin the colour of almonds (the brownish almonds, not the greenish almonds obviously), white shirt rakishly handing out over his jeans and a manbag slung over his shoulder. He's pretty friendly too, offering a cheery hello and a wave. To his credit, he's only marginally less friendly when I tell him who I am.
He's the manager of MK Dons and he's the latest appointee of chairman Pete Winkelman. Of late, Winkelman has showed he can pick 'em, for first Martin Allen and then Paul Ince succeeded and then fled to pastures more lucrative. I don't meet him today, but I really like Winkelman, I like his daring to dream, I like his indefatigable good cheer, I like the way he's kept his promise to build the mk:stadium and I like the way he's seen off the idiot revanchists who were banging the Wimbledon drum and that idiotic Franchise FC sneer. The good people of Wimbledon and their elected council didn't want a football club. The good people of Milton Keynes and their elected council did, hence better gates for MK Dons in league 2 than Premiership Wimbledon. What's the problem here?
I like the way Winkelman's taken a chance on Di Matteo too, ahead of Ian Holloway, Nigel Parson and the rest of the usual possibilities. The Swiss-born Italian ushers me into the office, gets a minion to make coffee (it's heroically awful, perhaps that's why he has sugar in his), shoves a brown envelope marked "bonuses" to one side and tells me how he got the job and, more guardedly, what he's going to do with it. I warm to him, although when he's finished answering a question, he stops abruptly, which makes things more of an interrogation and less of a chat. Then again, his English may be impeccable but it's probably his third language.
Under him, MK Dons will survive, but their squad is terrifyingly slender and if they have injuries and if Di Matteo is a poorer judge of a player than his boss is of a manager, they'll undoubtedly struggle.
Afterwards, he escorts me out of the building to my car. He stands and waves me off. Old school courtesy: you can't beat it.