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Victor Valdes had a surprise answer to a routine question.

“Could you imagine ever playing for a club that isn’t Barcelona, or are you here for life?” I asked him at the Spanish club’s training ground in December 2012.

“I will leave,” replied Valdes with unexpected assuredness. “It’s hard to imagine wearing another shirt, but I’ve been doing this 11 years.

“One year as Barcelona keeper is like three years at another team. The pressure is immense.

“I want to try other cultures, new football, new challenges. I like the Premier League in England, of course. They shoot a lot - ‘shoot on goal’ – that’s what you say in English, no?

“I like the respect of the crowd towards footballers in England. It’s a different way of living football.”

I had to check I’d heard him right. Was Valdes really saying that he was going to leave his hometown club in the city where his friends and family lived?

A city where he’d built the most beautiful home of all the Barça players on the Mediterranean coast south of the airport? Clad in white metals and plastics, it looks like a super yacht, only on land and not sea.

The ensuing months showed he wasn’t using his words as a negotiating tactic for a better Barça contract, though he may have been using it to get a message to any suitors in England.

Elements of the Catalan press turned against him, while Barça fans booed him during subsequent matches.

They couldn’t understand why a player who’d risen through the ranks and won the lot would want to leave, just at the point where he was respected as one of the club’s great keepers.

They thought there was an ulterior motive - a financial one - but Valdes stuck by his conviction that he wanted to seek pastures new.

Valdes had made his Barça first-team debut in 2002, aged 20, when his talents were spotted by Louis van Gaal and his goalkeeping coach Frans Hoek (both who are now at United) as he played for Barça B.

He was picked ahead of new signing Robert Enke, the German goalkeeper who tragically committed suicide in 2009.

My friend Ronnie Reng wrote the international bestseller about Enke’s life and went to see Valdes in Barcelona.

At first Barça refused him an interview because they weren’t comfortable about the subject matter – death and depression. When they were told about all the other people who’d agreed to speak, they granted Reng 20 minutes with Valdes.

Three hours later, Valdes was still asking Reng questions.

On one level, Van Gaal and Valdes didn’t see eye to eye. Van Gaal accused him of not being able to handle the pressure at Barca. Or was this a ruse to provoke the player into proving his doubting coach wrong?

He certainly lasted a lot longer at Camp Nou than the Dutchman, who was sacked that season.

Valdes established himself in the first team and won everything – league titles, three European Cups and the trust of those great players in front of him.

He improved year on year and played over 500 times for the Catalans.

Real Madrid’s Iker Casillas was a better goalkeeper, but not by much. By 2013 Valdes was rated as the better of the two.

He’d already made his mind up to leave Barcelona and his agent began speaking to other clubs.

Monaco were the one who came forward with a huge tax-free offer. Realising he was definitely going, Barca’s fans began to appreciate him a little more and chant his name at games.

He’s a club legend who cost nothing; it would’ve been ungrateful to do otherwise.

All was going to plan until March 2014 when Valdes ruptured his cruciate ligament. He only had three months left on his contract and there was further bad news. In July, Monaco’s sporting director Vadim Vasyliev announced: “He is an injured player and will not play here.”

Valdes, who is 33 next week, has signed an 18-month contract with United, along with an option for another year, and now hopes to put a horrible 2014 behind him.

It’s normal for the biggest clubs to have two top goalkeepers and in David De Gea and Valdes, United now boast two exceptional, world-class custodians.

Just don’t expect Valdes to settle for being No.2.