There was a moment two days ago, just after lunch on Thursday afternoon, when David Ginola once again embodied the dream still dreamed by millions of small boys and ageing men around the world.
"To wake up every morning," Ginola said through a typically long and lazy grin, "and know that you are a footballer is like a very strange and beautiful surprise. You cannot grow tired of it. Every day I have this feeling. It's incredible."
He continued in the same vein. "When people ask me now, `How are you feeling?', I laugh - especially before a match. There is only one word to say: `Fantastic.' There is nothing better. I know the crowd in the stadium will be big, the pitch will be green and that I will play with all my heart."
David Batty might occasionally plough the same furrow of thought but Ginola still lives in a more rarefied world. Yet beyond his work this year as the UN's special envoy against land mines, and beyond even this week's lavish Hello! cover story, in which David and his lovely wife Coraline risk the magazine's curse on celebrity love and invite us into "their magnificent North London home to explain how their marriage survives despite the pressures a top footballer faces", Ginola's own enduring joy in football has been ironically bolstered by the growing recognition that his sumptuous talent can also be matched by Batty-like tactical discipline and hard work.
The ski-slope cheekbones and blue-chip eyes, as well as the lavish television commercials for gleaming hair and corporate cars, have often obscured Ginola's footballing ambition. This season, however, it has been impossible to miss the controlled desire which has seen him, since the arrival of George Graham, deliver the consistency he has so often lacked. And, sticking to his wide role, Ginola has also proved that he can set aside his yearning for the mazy dribble to deliver telling crosses at the earliest opportunity.
"But I have always been a worker," Ginola protested with an artistic shrug. Even in training I never think, `Pah, today I don't feel like playing.' I love to work. It's terrible when people say, `Ah, Ginola, he is a luxury.' If I was, I would've left this club in the middle of last season when things were tough. But I stay and fight. I also had a good season then.
"I scored many goals and made some more. I expressed myself and pushed all the other players and said, `C'mon, we have to survive in the Premier League - because football is not only our living, it is our life.' Coming from the south of France, I'm very hot-blooded - I always have this strong emotion."
The forwards in some French club rugby sides have been known to prepare by cracking their heads together, something Ginola finds understandable. "It is to find the right motivation," he said. "When I was young, about 17, we shared our stadium with a rugby team. In training we often played rugby too. Our coach was also an extreme guy. He would talk to us in a rugby-style with rude speech.
"Y'know, it would be like, `C'mon, you bastards!' "
Which must have been good preparation for George Graham.
"Yeah," Ginola nodded seriously, "against Manchester United last week we were 2-0 down at half-time. But in the dressingroom he really shout at us. We showed the right reaction in the second half. We got the draw. Sometimes you need a manager to show that spirit."
It hurt, he said, when people assumed he would be transfer listed by Graham. "I don't understand. I have respect for every manager and, with George Graham, people now say I'm playing my best football. But I always try my best. In my first season in England - with Kevin Keegan - I was also good."
While sustaining the quality of those sublime early moments in a Newcastle shirt, Ginola was equally emphatic that "there's a big difference now. When I first came to England I really felt like a foreigner. The English players, to be honest, did not make an effort to help. It was very difficult. At Spurs, also, at the start it was a little `wait and see' from them. Now I have respect and friendship here and I'm very happy. Most people even say bonjour or merci. That's something in England.
"The fans also realise I've been in this country for four years and still I give everything. So they always give me a good boost - with George Graham they make me want to stay at Tottenham forever.
"Of course I still get bad things said about me. Last week, when Gary Neville fouled me and got sent off, Alex Ferguson said to me afterwards, `You were diving'. I just say to him, `Look at the tape'. It was the same when Steve Stone got sent off for Forest. The way I play, these guys always mark me very close. I get past them and then they drop me. Sometimes it's the only way they think they can stop me . . ."
