London calling, but will it be answered?

Mary Hannigan profiles Damien Duff, the quiet lad from Ballyboden, and wonders whether the bright lights of Stamford Bridge will interest him.

"My name doesn't really sit among them," said Damien Duff when he was voted on to UEFA.com's 2002 team of the year, alongside Zinedine Zidane, Ronaldo, Thierry Henry and seven more of the world's most celebrated footballers. The response was classic Duff, a player who gives the impression, with a shrug of the shoulders, that he's never quite sure what all the fuss is about. And this week there's been an abundance of fuss.

By all accounts Duff's favourite pastime, after tormenting right-backs, is sleeping. "He's been known to suffer from time to time from, eh, adhesive mattress syndrome," as Brian Kerr once put it, a charge to which Duff pleads guilty. Talking about the, well, sleepy Lancashire village he lives in: "I live near lots of old people. Some of the other lads live nearby, but they're all in love or whatever . . . mostly I just sleep."

Duff's performances in the 2002 World Cup, though, appeared to wake Blackburn's major Premiership rivals from their slumber, with both Liverpool and Manchester United sufficiently impressed to "inquire" about the player's availability. Liverpool, reportedly, offered £12 million for him last summer, but Blackburn manager Graeme Souness dismissed the figure, insisting it would take "a ridiculous offer", along the lines of £20 million, to prize the player away from Ewood Park.

What Kerr, amongst others, had known for years - i.e., that the boy's a bit special - was suddenly dawning on others. "He has the potential to become one of the all-time greats," said no less than England "legend" Tom Finney, who purred over the emergence of a good old-fashioned winger, a breed he - and he was not alone - had long since believed was extinct.

All of this talk, though, didn't sit comfortably with a player renowned for his modesty and a preference for a languid lifestyle, untroubled by reporters asking him, at every available opportunity, if he was Anfield/Old Trafford-bound.

"That was a sensational performance by you, Damien, possibly the most brilliant ever seen at Lansdowne Road, magnificent, glorious, fantastic, dazzling and other-worldly," the post-match quote-seekers often say to him. "Ah, well," he'll reply, "I'm happy enough - listen lads, sorry, gotta go, have to meet my Ma".

And he's gone, ambling down the tunnel, leaving not a single "yeah, I was magic" quote behind. The quote-seekers know how the right-backs feel. Defeated.

Self-effacing, then. Remember his goal against Saudi Arabia in the World Cup? Remember his restrained celebration? Forming the shape of a, well, bow? Calm down, Damien, calm down. "Well, you just go mad, don't you," he said, genuinely appearing to believe that he had behaved in a frenzied fashion.

And then it was back to Blackburn, and Blackburn is where he stayed last season, despite all the speculation. "He had a fair few choices, Celtic and a few others were interested in him, but it was always sticking out that he would go to a club that wasn't in a big city," said Ken O'Donoghue of St Kevin's, the schoolboy club from which Blackburn signed him. "Blackburn was the ideal club for him because he was a shy and quite young fella, as he still is now."

The middle member of a Ballyboden family of five children (parents Gerard and Mary), Duff joined Leicester Celtic when he was eight. "Dad is soccer mad and he threw a football at me almost as soon as I could walk," he said.

He stayed with Leicester Celtic for four years. "I actually switched to rugby for a couple of years because it was the main sport at the school I went to (De La Salle, Churchtown). They had me playing as a full back, but I always wanted to make a go of it at football so I teamed up with another local club called Lourdes Celtic before later joining St Kevin's."

At Lourdes Celtic Duff came under the wing of Tony McNally, moving on to Kevin's four years later. "Unlike Ian Harte, Damien didn't come through the system at Kevins," said O'Donoghue, "he was a ready-made player when he came in, travelling to us from Ballyboden to Whitehall - and there was no M50 in those days, it was a fair old slog through town.

"Very, very quiet, nice, well-mannered lad. You knew immediately, though, that he was something special."

Pat Devlin, then Blackburn scout and still Duff's advisor, who had been watching Duff since he was a 13-year-old with Leicester Celtic, sent him to Ewood Park where he signed on YTS terms, turning professional soon after his 17th birthday. A year later he made his first team debut (against Leicester, in the last game of the 1996-97 season).

"It was Friday afternoon, I was at home resting when Tony Parkes (the assistant manager) rang me to tell me I was in the squad, probably as a substitute. An hour before the game Tony told me I was actually going to start and that he'd kept it back to stop me getting uptight. For a split second I felt quite faint, but the nervousness soon wore off and the other lads really helped me through."

By then Duff had already established himself as one of the shining lights of Kerr's youth set-up, going on to win bronze at the 1997 World Youth Cup in Malaysia, playing again in the 1999 tournament in Nigeria. Mick McCarthy gave him his senior debut in March, 1998, in a friendly against the Czech Republic, and, since 2001, he has established himself in the team, winning 37 caps.

A year ago Duff signed a new four-year contract at Blackburn, rumoured to be worth £25,000-a-week, a deal that the club, in light of the collapse in the transfer market, might have thought guaranteed that their most prized possession would remain at Ewood Park, at least until 2006.

They hadn't banked on billionaire Roman Abramovich striding in to Stamford Bridge, though, waving a book-load of blank cheques. The Sunday Times say he is worth £3.8 billion - hardly surprising, then, that the Russian would regard Duff's £17 million release clause as loose change.

But would Chelsea be the right move for Duff? Would he get any sleep at Stamford Bridge? Would it all be too flash, star-ridden and ego-packed for him? Would Claudio Ranieri know how to do a "Kerr" and get the best out of the player ("just go out and enjoy yourself . . . and Duffer, we all love you"). Would he better off staying in the northwest, finding another tranquil Lancashire village full of old people where he could get some kip?

Is he currently listening to his favourite Elvis Costello song, "I don't want to go to Chelsea"?

The decision, Damien, is yours.