Last month I had one of those weeks where you sit and reminisce about your career. It occured to me that I hadn’t seen or spoken to Clarence Seedorf for a long time, so one of my Fox Sport colleagues gave me his number and I decided to give him a call.

He answered the call and said “who is this?”

I just said what’s up (in Dutch) and he immediately started laughing so loud. It was one of the funniest things, because without either of us saying anything more, neither of us could stop laughing for about a minute until he was like “yes” and I was like “yes finally.”

“10 years it’s been since I heard my bro Mario’s voice,” he said.

The last time we had seen each other was when we both played for the Dutch national team, and he was playing in front of me against Luxembourg.

We spoke quickly on the phone and he told me he was coming to LA in a couple of weeks.

Last week we met at the Fox studio for a quick interview. We both agreed that whatever happens, we have to meet up again. Not long after he text me in the evening asking where I was and I said I’m heading out with some friends and he was let me know where and I meet you there. It was one of those dinners where we were lucky that we had a nice group, so everyone was deep in conversation with each other and we could talk about the good old times.

One story came up, about the time we both got picked by Ajax on the same day when I was 9 and he was 10. I remember back then I was skinny and he already had a six-pack, so we would all ask if we could punch him in the stomach. He was shy at first because nobody knew each other, but we just kept asking until he had no choice but to stand there and take it. (I am sure you know who was trying to punch the hardest.)

We laughed some more about the crazy thing we both had with our football boots. We talked about how we struggled to keep playing with the old boots that were so broken we had to tape them up, and later one of us found glue to stick them together, because it wasn’t cheap for our parents to keep buying us new boots.

I think he was one of the earlier players to wear boots with a colorful strip on them. Back then we killed him for wearing them, but today it has changed and nearly all boots are colourful (and the players don’t have to worry about glue because they get them for free before they become pro).

Later we started talking about how he wanted to be a coach, and he said he was waiting for a call from the Spanish team Deportivo, but we had to keep quiet about it. And yesterday I woke up and texted him after seeing the great news. My bro did it!

I wish you the best and I’ll see you soon, because it certainly won’t be another 10 years before we speak again.

#mmlove