David Bentley still counts the night he pulled his hood up and sat on the train out of Finsbury Park station listening to excited Arsenal fans talking about the chipped goal they had just witnessed as one of the best moments of a career that was lived fast and finished early.

Then aged 19, Bentley appeared to have the world at his feet after lofting the ball over Middlesbrough goalkeeper Mark Schwarzer from the edge of the penalty area, but 10 years later he retired – fed up with a game that was no longer allowing him to smile.

These days he splits his time between working for a football agency, managing restaurants and opening a new bespoke flooring business, GFF Bentley and Howell, in Stansted.

It is almost a decade since Tottenham Hotspur paid Blackburn Rovers £15 million for Bentley, but the 33 year-old has not kicked a ball since the night in Cardiff when he decided it was all over and chief among the disappointments was his England experience.

Such was the rigid nature of the England set-up, Bentley took to making his own fun by smuggling McDonald’s into the team hotel, taking advantage of manager Fabio Capello’s lack of English by calling the confused Italian Postman Pat and getting up to no good with his partner in crime Jimmy Bullard.