The highs and lows of professional football

Two products of professional football, Emmanuel Petit and Alan Dunne present a vivid contrast and although Dunne never reached the heights of the Frenchman, he still has much to be grateful for...

That football, even at the professional level, is a broad church was brought home to me over the past seven days through encounters with two very different players and personalities — Emmanuel Petit and Alan Dunne.

Petit you know, of course — a winner of World Cup, European Championship, Premier League, and FA Cup medals, a former Arsenal great whose biggest regret in football is that, after leaving Barcelona to return to England, he turned down Alex Ferguson’s repeated offer of a place at Manchester United.