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Former Middlesbrough star Gaizka Mendieta has responded to a tongue-in-cheek question posed by the club’s official Twitter account.

The former Spain international, who starred at the Riverside as well as representing Valencia, Lazio and Barcelona during his career, featured in the latest issue of FourFourTwo answering questions from fans about his career.

Middlesbrough’s social media team took the opportunity to hijack the Q&A, asking ‘what is the biggest highlight of your playing career, and why is it the Carling Cup win in 2004?’.

After laughing, Mendieta issued a response which shows just how important the Basque ace’s spell on Teesside was for him.

“Obviously it’s not the highlight of my career, although it’s certainly one of them, but it as massively crucial for me to win the Carling Cup,” he replied.

“After I had been at Valencia, Lazio and Barcelona, I went to Middlesbrough and a lot of people thought ‘what the hell? What’s going on here!?’.

“It was tremendously important for me to show the world that I felt valued in that Middlesbrough side, a key player, and that we could win games, and winning this cup in my first year there did that

“I moved to Lazio and Barcelona and didn’t win any titles, and then I went to Middlesbrough and we reached two cup finals. Football can be funny sometimes. It was amazing to win that Carling Cup final against Bolton in Cardiff.”

Mendieta was also asked about the reasons behind his move to Middlesbrough, which raised eyebrows as he had spent the previous campaign on loan with Spanish giants Barcelona.

“After my Barcelona loan I went back to Italy but I knew being there wasn’t an option because I didn’t want to stay at Lazio and risk spending another season not playing,” he explained.

“Steve McClaren came out to talk to me and showed me the project at Middlesbrough. It was really exciting and I thought that after two years of moving around I needed somewhere I could play every week and get back to the love of the game.

“So, rather than waiting for a big club to come, that was what I decided to do. There was interest from other English teams around the same sort of level as Boro but I picked them because of the interesting project and ambition of the club, and also because of the guys they had already brought in like Juninho and Boudewijn Zenden.

“I thought they would help me play the football I wanted to play.”