I WORKED at Durham University for many years and ran the psychology department five-a-side team, which played in a very competitive lunchtime league at Maiden Castle Sports Hall. It was about 1996 and Kevin Keegan and the Newcastle team used to train at Maiden Castle most mornings. The department had a new research student from Parma, Italy, called Marco Mosca.

As we drove down to our game from the science site I said to Marco that Faustino Asprilla had been signed from Parma by Keegan and that we may see Tino when we went to play.

Marco said that there was no chance of Tino being there as he was “a very bad man with guns who stole many cars.”

Marco observed there were only two policemen and there would be many more if Faustino was there.

As we arrived, Asprilla walked past us to play head tennis on the badminton court with Keegan, Terry McDermott and Brian Kilcline.

The noise from the badminton court was wild during our game and Marco could not concentrate as he was too busy watching Asprilla. Our game finished and we went into the showers, only to be confronted with Tino taking a shower. Marco said ‘Ciao’ and a long conversation in Italian followed.

There was no controlling him after that. Best day ever for him and when we got back to work he phoned his father immediately to tell the tale. Even in Italy, Asprilla was a ‘wild man’.

Malcolm Rolling, Carrville