There was no internet then, and it wasn’t so easy to find out about the news. Not many people had a clue about English football.

But I spoke to him, I liked him and I signed immediately. Then the possibility of another player coming with me arose. So much the better: I wouldn’t feel so alone.

It took a little while to convince him, but in the end he said yes, too.

And, with that, Ricardo Villa (above, left) and I became pioneers.

At the beginning it was really hard for us because, at Tottenham, they avoided the midfield completely. It was all about the long – very long – ball. Ricky suffered a lot. I didn’t so much, because I went in search of the ball to win it for myself. That’s how I got into the game.

However, we were lucky to have Glenn Hoddle with us.

“In England, the strong players had a kind of licence to kill”

That’s when the transformation came. And the idea.

The instruction was that we had to play out from the back. Specifically, the ball had to go to Glenn and I, and from there to Ricky. But it had to go via the midfield.

In England, greater value was placed on strength – on the strong players who had a kind of licence to kill in the sense that, in the first minutes of the match, they looked to foul you. And, if they could, they would put you out of the game.

In one of my first matches for Tottenham, Tommy Smith launched into a tackle from about three metres away. He caught me and I was out for about two months.

All the headlines read: “Welcome to English football!”