In January this year I went to the offices of the Welsh Football Association to meet Gary Speed.
It was the first interview he had given to a national newspaper since becoming manager of Wales the previous month, and I reminded him of a comment he had made in 2003, when asked if he could see himself one day managing his country. "If everything in life was perfect, yeah, but it's not,'' had been his reply. He smiled when I brought this up. "That was pretty profound for me,'' he said.
Tragically, it now appears that managing his country, and indeed making demonstrable progress in the job, did not mean that everything in life was perfect. Yet he seemed, on that cold winter's day in Cardiff, like a man who had pretty much everything he wanted. He talked proudly about his two sons, both talented at sport. He grinned at the suggestion that he might one day manage his older boy, Ed, who was in the Welsh Under-14s development squad, and told me about his younger son, Tommy, a boxer, who was English champion at 40 kilos last year.
"Until they were six and seven, they were both mad keen on Newcastle,'' said Speed, who joined the Magpies from his boyhood club, Everton, in 1998. "Then we moved to Chester, where they got a bit of stick for that. I told them they could change, but would have to support one team through thick and thin, for ever, as long as it was Everton. But Ed chose Liverpool. And Tommy chose Arsenal. He said: 'Dad, I like the way they play football'. And I thought, that's a great answer, I can't argue with that.''
Speed's own father had been a Liverpool supporter, but growing up in north Wales his best friend was John Ratcliffe, cousin of the Everton captain, Kevin. So Everton it was, and Everton it remained, even though his own two-year stint at Goodison Park came to an acrimonious end.