Balague: Biggleswade United, me, and Messi!

Our mascot for this special day will be eight year old Ben Horton who comes from Hammersmith in London and decided to support Biggleswade United after being much impressed with our passing and moving game when he watched us on Youtube.

It will be a pleasure to welcome him and his family to the club and hope we can reward their support with another league win.

And he almost certainly won’t be the only youngster in attendance. All the local schools have been contacted and informed of our offer to give free admission for the match to anyone under the age of 16 provided they are accompanied by a paying adult.

Former Chelsea and Espanyol midfielder, Quique de Lucas will almost certainly be in attendance and if he is there is more than a good chance that he will be in the squad.

We will also be welcoming representatives of 3 Monkeys, the PR firm that work with our sponsors Top Eleven in the UK as well as the acclaimed journalist and author Richard Foster who will be compiling a video piece on our club for one of the major and prestigious publications that he represents.

With Nordeus, adidas and our latest sponsors, the Barcelona based solicitors, avalaw, all proudly emblazoned on our shirts we will also be having official team pictures taken prior to the match.

All in all it should be quite a day as we set about trying to secure our ninth league victory in the past ten matches.

In fact it’s been quite a week that began for me in Zurich where, on Monday, I attended the annual Ballon d’Or and was able to meet up with old friends including Leo Messi who, I promise you, asked me how Biggleswade United were doing.

It was a great night and it was wonderful to meet up with the maestro again, have a selfie taken with him and talk football.

But as I have always maintained, be it Biggleswade or Barcelona, football is football, whatever standard it happens to be played at.

I am just as excited by my involvement with my friends and ‘family’ at Second Meadow as I am with rubbing shoulders with the greatest players in the world.

Next Tuesday we will be carrying on with our league campaign when we visit Sun Sports, where depending on Saturday’s result a win could see us leapfrog them in the table. Things are looking up. See you there.