When driving in the city streets of northern Italy it is wise to be wary of the driver of a particularly swanky Alfa Romeo, a man with a thick bush of dreadlocks tracking down his spine.
A couple of years ago, while cruising through Milan, Edgar Davids had a minor altercation with the two occupants of another car at a set of lights. During the robust exchange of words that followed, one of these men was unwise enough to utter a racist remark. He got his comeuppance: Davids put the pair of them in hospital, apparently employing the knuckle duster he happened to have about his person.
There are, in the popular view, two types of Dutch footballer. One has ice instead of blood and is so dedicated to his craft he has eschewed all peripheral things, minor encumbrances like personality. The other is the egotist, whose talent is surpassed only by his swollen self-worth, a player unimpressed by reputation, prone to tantrums and walk-outs if things are not centred on his genius.
But to regard Davids as merely another stroppy Dutchman is to do him the kind of injustice he tends not to forgive or forget. The man who stormed out of Holland's Euro 96 campaign suggesting that the coach's strategic vision would be greatly improved if he removed his head from other players' nether regions (this is to paraphrase) is, according to one long-time Dutch football watcher, the stroppiest of the stroppy.
"He has an incredible keenness to prove himself, which manifests itself as a need to confront," this observer says. "The man's every conversation is a battle, every slight is remembered."
As he has been proving this week, Davids is particularly keen on mocking journalists, holding them collectively responsible for every word of criticism offered in his direction. He loves to lead them on merry dances of missed appointments and broken arrangements, so that every interview ends up much like the plot of a Nick Bloomfield film. This, in short, is the original Dutchman With Attitude. The man who thinks the world is against him and is determined to prove them wrong.
The Juventus man has been on familiar form in the run-up to tonight's Champions League semi-final return with Manchester United. Not for Davids the bland mutual respect typical of most footballers' public utterances. While Thierry Henry, Juventus's French winger, politely said that "Manchester has no weaknesses; for me this is a very strong team", Davids last week laid into his opponents with cheery abandon.
"United are supposed to have the best midfield in the world, but we had the better of them at Old Trafford," he said. "We were like a steam train, overrunning them. I felt sick to my stomach when Giggs equalised for them. The longer I was out there, looking at opponents who had been described as such big stars, the more I realised what was in it for us. I have no fears any more. I want to get at them again."
With views like that, his first encounter with Roy Keane on Wednesday night could make interesting viewing. But then the way Davids has been playing recently, Keane will be lucky even to remonstrate with the Dutchman's shadow.
While his tongue has remained as unhinged as ever, on the pitch Davids is enjoying a spell of form which few people thought he could achieve - apart from him. In the past two years, since his move to Juventus after an injury-limited spell at Milan, he has transmogrified from a player whose potential was always compromised by his approach into the complete midfielder.
His whole repertoire was on display for his club against Lazio in Rome on Saturday, just as it had been at Old Trafford 10 days earlier during a performance that the Juventus owner, Gianni Agnelli, described as "the most beautiful" he had ever seen during his long association with the club.
The way his pony tail bounces off his neck, Davids looks at first glance a busy player, a drone, scurrying and carrying for the greater talents around him. But appearances are deceptive.
For most of the game against the Serie A leaders he ran operations without breaking stride, precise and measured in his passing, rarely giving the ball away. Yet, when the ball needed to be won, he took it back with brisk, efficient tackles.
But it was in the 53rd minute of the match that Davids showed how much he has developed as a player. Leaping two feet off the ground from a static start to meet a rising ball, he executed a stunning backheel volley precisely into the path of his colleague Antonio Conte. It was an enlightening moment.
Earlier in his career he was frequently derided as too tricksy. Louis van Gaal, his first coach at Ajax, dismissed his eagerness to humiliate opponents with dizzy dribbles as "masturbation". He seemed in his early days keener to put one over his immediate opponent than to work for the general good of the team.
It was only when he moved to Juventus in 1997 for £3 million that he really began to cut loose as a player.
Juventus suited him. As a keen student of Dennis Rodman, his antennae were always alert to the intricacies of cool. And given his early days growing up in the tough estates ringing northern Amsterdam, to his way of thinking Juve were cool, the ideal platform for a man of his talent.
More than that, though, arriving in Turin he found himself in the same midfield as Zinedine Zidane, the best player in the world. And even the stroppiest give praise where it is due.
"Zizou is a phenomenon," Davids says. "It is an honour to share the same midfield as him," Davids says, before adding, lest anyone gets the impression he has turned into a sap: "But he thinks the same about me."
Davids quickly learned alongside the master. As he showed when he nutmegged Paul Scholes on the edge of the United penalty area earlier this month to set up Juve's first-leg goal, he learned to reserve his trickery for moments when it would hurt most.
If Juve triumph tonight, Davids will have qualified for his fourth Champions League final in five years, a unique achievement for a 26-year-old.
Unique: that is precisely the kind of adjective this most driven of Dutchmen likes to see attached to his name.
