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Brad Friedel


Big Salad

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Nice story.

I met the legendary Jimmy Greaves outside Villa Park before we played and beat Internazionale in 1990. I so badly wanted his autograph and seemingly missed my opportunity as the irksome Gary Newbon was getting frustrated at Jimmy stopping to sign autographs and was desperately trying to usher him away.

I was also young then at 12 years old and my Dad quipped: "Ah you've missed your chance now son". To which Jimmy stopped in his tracks, turned and shouted: "Where is he?" So I went and got his autograph after all. Jimmy definitely had some aura about him and I always liked him but I will never forget that moment.

I still have my Aston Villa autograph book, the same night I got the autographs of Klinsmann, Brehme, Zenga and a few others. The one I really wanted was Lothar Matthaus as he, Platt (and Van Basten) were my favourite players. I was deeply upset Matthaus didn't stop to sign and my Dad certainly let him know, I'm sure he called him a miserable German b*****d.

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On 04/01/2021 at 17:56, Big Salad said:

Just wanted to post about an experience I had of meeting Brad and how nice of a guy he was at the time.

It happened in June of 1996 after the US played Ireland in the U.S. Cup.  For the game itself, that was great with us winning 2-1👍, Anyway, this was my first USMNT game as my dad had won tickets from his job and took me and my brother. I was very excited at this time,(10 years old), to attend my first national team game.

When the game was over, their was an autograph session with the players and even though the lines were quite long, no way were my brother and I going to leave without getting some stuff signed. After Lalas and Cobi Jones signed, we came to Brad. Now to put this into even more context of how important and momentous this was for me, Friedel was my favorite player as I myself was a GK on my youth team and so therefore tried to emulate everything about how he played the game.

I think Friedel could sense my nervousness lol as I stood speechless in front of the table after he asked me my name and did I enjoy the game.  After a few more seconds of silence,he told me to stand off to the side for a few minutes and he would come talk to me.  I nodded mutely and me and my brother did so.

Eventually he did come over to talk to us, and after a few more minutes of star struckness from me, I began to open up to him and he even ended up giving me some pointers to help with my own game, let my dad take a picture of me and him, and lastly had a team assistant go and grab his backup jersey for me to take home with me.  To say that I was overjoyed would be an understatement; one of the best days of my adolescence no doubt.

Just thought I would tell this as just all seems to be even sweeter that down the road he became the Villa GK and now I am a Villa fan also.

Anyone else have a story to tell about meeting their hero?

Going from the timeline, my takeaway from this story is you must be amongst the last people to ever see Brad Friedel's hair.

90s Football on Twitter: "Did you know Brad Friedel once had hair? I'd just  assumed he was born bald. Here he is in 1994. http://t.co/v0RmNT9XQ9"

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On 05/01/2021 at 23:48, Zhan_Zhuang said:

Nice story.

I met the legendary Jimmy Greaves outside Villa Park before we played and beat Internazionale in 1990. I so badly wanted his autograph and seemingly missed my opportunity as the irksome Gary Newbon was getting frustrated at Jimmy stopping to sign autographs and was desperately trying to usher him away.

I was also young then at 12 years old and my Dad quipped: "Ah you've missed your chance now son". To which Jimmy stopped in his tracks, turned and shouted: "Where is he?" So I went and got his autograph after all. Jimmy definitely had some aura about him and I always liked him but I will never forget that moment.

I still have my Aston Villa autograph book, the same night I got the autographs of Klinsmann, Brehme, Zenga and a few others. The one I really wanted was Lothar Matthaus as he, Platt (and Van Basten) were my favourite players. I was deeply upset Matthaus didn't stop to sign and my Dad certainly let him know, I'm sure he called him a miserable German b*****d.

My dad is a spurs fan and Greavsie is his all time hero. He met him once by chance  at his local leisure club (might have been some golf function)   and had a good chat with him over a non alcoholic drink. Belatedly given a MBE this year.  Its sad to see his health now.

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Met Dwight Yorke years ago when I was a kid, he had a kick about with our football team not one of us could take the ball off him, Bozzie and Frogratt was there aswell but was only Dwight that really bothered with us lot 

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