YOURI DJORKAEFF

The World Cup-winning Frenchman picks a dream team made up of his former team-mates, featuring O Fenomeno, The Rock and The Guv’nor

FABIEN BARTHEZ “Fabien’s a very good friend of mine, and we can sit and talk for hours. Like so many goalkeepers, he has an air of eccentricity about him. My abiding memory of France training sessions would be his reluctance to go in goal. He’d insist on playing as an outfield player during practice matches. On the occasions we did convince him to stay in goal, he’d come sprinting up the pitch screaming, ‘Come on, let me take it’ every time his team won a free-kick!”

PAUL INCE “Paul was a fantastic player and really competitive. We were together at Inter, and when we went to warm up before every game, he’d groan and say, ‘Do I have to?’ He was always eager to just get on with the game. We had a great team and he gave me the confidence and freedom to play my game. By picking Paul Ince and Patrick Vieira in my XI, I’d know my back four had the absolute best protection for Zinedine Zidane to perform his magic.”

RONALDO “Of course, Cristiano is the Ronaldo people talk about today, but I will always call my Inter team-mate the ‘real Ronaldo’. I played alongside some truly incredible players during my career. Zizou could do anything with the ball and George Weah was completely different to anyone else around at that time, but the best I ever played with was Ronaldo. You have one player in a generation that changes the way football is played. For two decades, he was a phenomenon. His movement, his running, the way in which he linked with team-mates… it was revolutionary.”