By Myles Palmer
Philippe Senderos is a tremendous centreback who may be able to play Premiership football at 18.
He has a pedigree. At 13 he played for the Swiss Under-15s and at 15 he played for the Under-17s.
And he is a leader, an organiser. He was always captain of those teams.
In 2002 he captained the Swiss team that won the European Under-17 championship in Denmark.
They beat France on penalties after a 0-0 draw.
And he played for the Under-19s.
The kid is special.
Juventus, Milan, Real Madrid and Bayern all wanted him.
Sir Alex invited Senderos and his dad to a game in November 2002 and they saw United beat Newcastle 5-3.
Senderos wants to be the new Henchoz.
No surprise that a French-speaking Swiss footballer wants to join a French manager in London, which has easy airline access to Switzerland.
He sounds ambitious, but sensible.
Senderos played for Servette in Geneva, signed for Arsenal last December, but stayed on at school till the end of this summer term.
When a kid has the luxury of choice, he can afford to be idealistic and say things like, “I like Arsenal’s style of play.”
This is what he said :
“I always had enormous respect for Arsene Wenger and wanted to work under him. I like his style of play.Wenger came to Geneva to watch me play, and I made a trip to London as well. He talked to me and my father. It impressed me.”
He has been told that he will be in the first team squad,mainly as a substitute at first.
“It will be hard work, but I am going there to grow into a world-class player.”
Not many defenders can play at 18.
But Baresi did, Tony Adams did, Bergomi did.
At Monaco, Wenger put Thuram and Petit in at 18.
Both of them were very powerful athletes.
Senderos is also a powerful athlete.
His father is Spanish and his hero is Fernando Hierro of Real Madrid.
My spies tell me that Senderos did well alongside Martin Keown at Barnet on Saturday, while Cygan was poor.
John Hall was excellent in midfield, although his best position is left centreback.
For about 30 years we had something called transfer speculation.
A player might be sold to one of three or five clubs.
Then we had financial meltdown in world football and suddenly there is nowhere to go. Clubs can’t afford top players now.
So what used to be transfer speculation has become transfer fantasy.
And we have seen lots of that, like Thierry to Chelski.
Chelsea will NOT be signing Thierry Henry for £70 million.
Those stories are absurd.
Thierry loves it at Arsenal.
He would never play for Chelsea unless Arsene Wenger was the manager of Chelsea.
Thierry is a pussycat who needs a lot of stroking, many saucers of milk, many cuddles.
He wouldn’t be happy working for Ken Bates or training at polluted Harlington with jumbos zooming over the crossbar every two minutes.
At Old Trafford, Peter Kenyon is squealing so loud I can hear him in London :
We negotiated for five months, but Ronaldinho didn’t join us – he hasn’t got the bottle to play for Man United, blah blah blah.
A month ago I figured out that Barcelona would be better for the kid.
I hoped his agent brother would figure this out too.
Frank Rijkaard is a nice guy who was a great player and spent his life playing with great players.
Ronaldinho needs to mature. Frank can help him do that.
The kid is 23 and one season out of the Champions League will not damage his career.
He will enjoy Barcelona and Barcelona will enjoy him.
If Kenyon wants to know who United should sign, he should give me a call.
21st July 2003.