We arrived at the state of the art KC Wizards Swope Park Training Facility to attend a private training session with Manchester United. There had been some rain on the drive in but we weren’t expecting rain. ManU had landed at KC International around noon and had a press conference at 3:00. They were expected to arrive for training around 5. National weather service issued a Severe weather warning around 4 and when the lightning moved in, we all moved towards the shelter. Then it rained, and rained and rained and rained. We were soaked. But it did clear off. And our reward was an autograph signing with the entire Manchester United Squad.
Everyone queued up and they worked us through the line. As we entered the room they were trying to speed things up and push us through. A hand touched my shoulder and a strong Scottish accent provided me with further instructions. It was Sir Alex Ferguson. I surprisingly acknowledged Sir Alex and welcomed him to Kansas City. At the same time, Berbatov was signing Maelin’s hat and Edwin Van der Sar was signing Riley’s goalie gloves. Our ManU kit moved through line picking up all their signatures. I was able to stop and greet Ryan Giggs and he signed his card for me. Pretty sweet.
We headed outside and the weather had cleared off. After the autograph session they would go ahead and do training, so we headed out to the training pitch to get a good spot. It was exciting to see all thes players in person, but personally greeting Sir Alex was the most exciting moment. Riley and I had attended a Chelsea practice session a few years ago in Bridgeview and had the good fortune to meet Jose Mourinho. Not bad, a soccer coach from Sedalia having the pleasure of meeting both Jose Mourinho AND Sir Alex Ferguson including watching both run their squads through training. Hopefully something will rub off.
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