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Bastian Schweinsteiger is searching for the right word. It’s the morning after Manchester United’s 1-0 win over CSKA Moscow in the Champions League, and the midfielder is back at Old Trafford, sitting alongside Sport on a plush leather sofa in the directors’ box.

“Champions League matches are something special for me,” says Schweinsteiger, who won the competition with Bayern Munich in 2013 – redemption after he’d missed a crucial shoot-out penalty in the final against Chelsea the year before.

“Of course Premier League matches are special, but the atmosphere at night and the Champions League anthem is something that gives you a little bit of [extra] motivation.”

Steps lead down into to the stands, where the crowd’s frustrations could not be fully silenced by Wayne Rooney’s headed winner the previous evening. There were the increasingly familiar cries of ‘Attack! Attack! Attack!’ – calls that have been a feature of Louis van Gaal’s managerial reign at the Theatre of Dreams.

“I think he has his philosophy,” says Schweinsteiger, who joined from Bayern Munich in the summer on a three-year deal and speaks in careful, measured sentences. “We try to improve in every match, but it’s not easy sometimes when you play against teams who defend with ten players in their own half, and maybe a little bit deeper. You have to find solutions, and maybe the right moment to…”

He pauses. “Lift up the pace?”

“Accelerate?” we offer.

“Accelerate. Yeah. Exactly.”

Mr Calm

Watching the 31-year-old in action for United, it is clear he is the man with his foot on the pedal in that deep lying central midfield role, just as he was for several trophy-laden years at Bayern Munich. Schweinsteiger is the conductor, the pacemaker, the metronome – he sets United’s controlled tempo. His new team-mates have nicknamed him ‘Mr Calm’.

“There are some situations where you have to be fast,” says the World Cup and Champions League winner. “But you also have to give the feeling to your team-mates that everything is under control. I don’t it like it when there’s too much rush. So maybe this is where the name comes from. But this is the point – I sometimes control the situation and it looks calm, but it’s not. My brain and eyes are working all the time.”

Different slopes

Schweinsteiger was born in Oberaudorf, a small village about 50 miles outside Munich. His first memories of football are playing in the garden with his older brother Tobias, who is currently assistant manager of Bayern’s under-17s, and his father Alfred, who owned a sporting goods shop – Sport Schweinsteiger – in the village.

He holds fond memories of watching West Germany win the 1990 World Cup in Italy, but another sport captured the young Schweinsteiger’s attention early on. “You have to know that I grew up close to the border with Austria,” he tells us. “Austria is famous because of skiing, so I had to decide between skiing and football.”

It was a genuine choice. The young Schweinsteiger was an excellent skier – he would race with and routinely beat childhood friend Felix Neureuther, who won slalom silver at the 2013 Alpine World Ski Championships.

“When I was 14, I got the offer from Bayern,” remembers Schweinsteiger. “But then it meant I had to choose between football and skiing. I moved when I was 14 or 15 to Munich, and started from there.”

Bayern Munich had just won the Champions League when Schweinsteiger broke into the team as a teenager. He played as a winger or an attacking midfielder in his first few seasons there, but that all changed when van Gaal took over in 2009.

“He did not fit the position of left-winger for me,” the Dutchman said in 2013. “When I arrive at a new club, I talk with every player about his position, his personality, the team, how he works with team-mates. I told Bastian: ‘You have to play in midfield.’”

The rest is history. “He was the one who finally put me as a centre midfield player – that was very important for me,” remembers Schweinsteiger, who developed into one of the world’s best in that position for club and country.

Van Gaal’s time at Bayern also coincided with a change in Schweinsteiger off the pitch. There had been misdemeanours in those early ‘teen idol’ years, but he relished the responsibility of his new role on the pitch, and settled down off it.

“You learn a lot when you speak with him,” says Schweinsteiger. “Of course you have more responsibility on the pitch as well in that position. And of course when you get older, you have more experience and you see things differently.”

A new challenge

With 12 minutes of extra-time remaining in the 2014 World Cup final, and Germany locked 0-0 with Argentina, Schweinsteiger could be found by the side of the pitch in the Maracana, blood streaming down his face. His legs twitched as Germany’s medical team stapled up a nasty cut below his right eye. “I was so pumped with adrenaline, I hardly felt anything,” he told Raphael Honigstein in Das Reboot. “I didn’t even mind getting knocked about a little bit. I just wanted to avoid penalties at all costs.”

The game, which Germany won 1-0, was one of the best performances of Schweinsteiger’s career. He ran 15km – more than anyone else on the pitch – but it took its toll. He didn’t start a match for Bayern until December last season. In truth, his last few years at the club were frustrating, punctuated by recurrent knee injuries. After 17 years, it was time for a fresh start.

Van Gaal had not been in contact with the midfielder much since leaving Munich in 2011, but Schweinsteiger did send him a text to congratulate him on leading the Netherlands to the World Cup semi-finals in 2014. Schweinsteiger insists, however, that van Gaal was not the man who drew him to Old Trafford. “[But] it makes it a little bit easier for me because I know how he works and how he is,” he says.

King Eric

If any one person can take credit, it’s Eric Cantona. Schweinsteiger idolised the playmaker as a youngster. “He had this aura,” he says. “And he had quality – he was a world-class player; his attitude, he always wanted to win, and he was a personality.”

More than anything, it was the allure of the club – one of the handful that can match Bayern in terms of history and fanbase. “For me, the main reason was Manchester United,” says Schweinsteiger, the first ever German to play for the Red Devils.

“The English have a special sense of humour,” Schweinsteiger told German newspaper Bild shortly after joining United. “This I immediately experienced in the dressing room. As I walked with two plates while eating, suddenly a team-mate asked me: ‘Basti, what time is it?’ Hoping I would automatically turn my hand to look at my watch. That’s quite entertaining.”

From watching Schweinsteiger interact with his new team-mates, it seems he’s slotted right into place at United. “It was very easy for me,” he tells us. “The dressing room is really good – very friendly, you can feel also the team spirit. People are very helpful, so it was very easy for me to settle in. The good thing is I’m 31, not 20. So they have quite a lot of respect – so that’s good. It makes it easier.”

Does he see himself as a leader in the dressing room at his new club?

“We have Wayne, we have Michael Carrick, we have Chris Smalling, who have experience and they’re very important for that,” he says. “I try to help them. I’m not 20, so I know how it is; I just want to try to help. Of course I try to lead in some situations, but I’m not the one who says I’m a leader.”

In control

Schweinsteiger certainly looks like a leader on the pitch – pointing and shouting at his team-mates as moves develop. He insists his gesticulations are suggestions, rather than orders:

“In that position, you have to do this, but I’m not the only one. We have a lot of players who can do this. Maybe I have a lot of experience on a high level – I’ve played World Cup finals, Champions League finals. It is different at that level and you learn a lot, so I think it’s kind of helpful.”

He has a three-year contract at United, and he tells us that he has his eyes set on at least one more Champions League final before he retires, and that he wants to captain Germany to victory at Euro 2016.

Beyond that, who knows? Schweinsteiger is the patient, probing platform on which United’s title challenge is built. And, typically, he’s not in a rush.