When I was in London a few months ago to attend Chelsea’s last game with Spy, he told me that once in New York I’d be meeting Paul Canoville. The first brother to ever play for Chelsea FC.

You can imagine my excitement, not only is Paul a legend, but as he also paved the way for every racially abused black child dreaming of making it big. After Paul it wasn’t an impossible dream. it was achievable.

Once I was settles into my New York hotel room, Beth Wild, who organises Chelsea in America, called me down to come meet everybody. While greeting everyone I spotted Paul among the faces. I walked over to him and he went to shake my hand.

I said “No brother, I’m not going to shake your hand. You, I’m going to hug! You’re a legend, it’s an honour to meet you!”

He smiled back: “It’s an honour to meet you too.”

We hit it off straight away, just like brothers do.

I found out that although he’s been to New York several times he had never seen Times Square, so the following day I took him. We walked and chatted, until we encountered an Elvis Presley look-a-like and decided to take a picture with him. Once the picture was snapped and we had begun walking away, Elvis asked us for some money. We both thought we were being robbed – but it turns out you must pay to take photos with look alike celebrities in America.

Once the mistake was cleared up, I gladly paid Elvis for his troubles and we walked on.

In the following days we spent a lot of time together and got to know each other a little better.We attended the New York Red bulls vs Chelsea game in the Red Bulls Stadium and then proceeded to fly from New York to Charlotte, North Carolina.

In the flight over we got reminiscing over some of our best football moments. Paul told me the story of him getting called for a trial at Chelsea in 1981, at the time he was playing for Hillingdon Borough FC. He came to train and since he didn’t hear anything back he figured he hadn’t impressed, and just didn’t come back the following week.

Since he didn’t show up, one of the Chelsea coaches called him up and asked him why he didn’t show. Paul explained that he thought he hadn’t made the cut. But the coach apologised for the confusion and assured him they wanted him on the team, and so Paul started playing for Chelsea at 20 years old.

A team for which he played for 5 years, just like me.

On his first game and first time riding the team bus, he could barely withhold his excitement. He had never been on a bus with a toilet on it, let alone tables and a kitchen. He loved it so much, he was ready to move in.

Once in the stadium he started off on the bench. As the minutes passed he was getting more and more anxious to come on the field, fidgeting in his chair until finally the coach asked him to warm up.

As soon as his feet touched the sideline’s grass, the insults began, and so his confidence began to sink.

Since the coach didn’t seem to notice Paul was ready to come on, he started jumping up and down and stretching behind the goal to try and get his attention.

In the 85th minute the coach gave him the chance he had hoped for, but that day had been broken by the hurtful screams and slurs. Paul did not play the way he meant to, and once the referee blew the whistle he couldn’t have been any quicker into the locker room.

He wanted to get as far away from those nasty screams as he possibly could.

I asked him how he managed to get his confidence back after what had happened and he replied with the same answer I had grown up with:

“Mario, as long as you believe in yourself, nobody can break you.”