"Life is just one.” It is a phrase Roberto Pereyra uses more than once over the course of our time together at Watford’s training ground, as he reflects on the importance of living life to the full and how best to pay his respects to Emiliano Sala.

Pereyra hoped to face his fellow Argentine for the first time in Watford’s game at Cardiff City on Friday night. Instead it will be the Welsh club’s first home game since Sala’s body was retrieved from the plane that crashed into the English Channel last month.

Pereyra had never met Sala but he wanted to. He wanted to go for dinner and talk, share experiences, as he does with other Argentine players and as he recently did with Gonzalo Higuain, a week after the striker joined Chelsea.

He knew Sala’s story; his journey. How hard he, like Pereyra, like so many of his countrymen, had fought to have a successful career in football; in chasing the dream.

Pereyra has spoken about the tragedy with his team-mates at Watford but, after days of discussing it, they realised “it became too painful. It was too much for anyone to talk about” – partly because there were so few answers. Pereyra also discussed it with fellow Argentines at other Premier League clubs, friends of his in London including Manuel Lanzini and Pablo Zabaleta at West Ham and, especially, his near neighbour, Tottenham’s Erik Lamela.