January 1st, 2018. Seven-fifteen in the morning. The DB11 idling outside a café on Beckenham High Street.
The place was called Rosie's.
A proper café, not a chain. Formica tables, condensation on the windows, a chalkboard menu that hadn't changed since 2003, and a woman behind the counter named Maggie who had been making full English breakfasts for builders and bus drivers and, more recently, the youngest manager in Premier League history, since before he was born.
I had discovered Rosie's in my first week at the training ground. The coffee was strong, the sausage rolls were criminal, and Maggie didn't care who you were or what you did for a living as long as you said please and thank you and didn't take the last copy of the Daily Mirror.
