“HE WAS clearly something special,” Gareth Southgate recalls. “He was more slim and rangy than now, but his physical stature was obvious. So was his talent. As you’d expect, he trained well.”

Managers see scores of triallists and for Southgate, at Middlesbrough in December 2008, this one seemed too good to be true. In fact, he was — Southgate found the young Serb was already promised to Chelsea.

“He came over with another youngster from [the Slovakian club] Kosice, but it turned out only the other lad, who we didn’t want, was available,” says Southgate.

That “trial” at Middlesbrough might be the only recorded instance of Nemanja Matic getting in a bad position. How Southgate would love to have signed him; Chelsea did, then let