Feyenoord coach on how a chat with his daughter changed his life, memories of Arsenal and Manchester United and a lunch with Guardiola
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obin van Persie was warming to his theme, imparting wisdom to his children, Shaqueel and Dina, then 14 and 10. “We were at the kitchen table in our new house and I was giving them a speech: ‘You have to find your passion as soon as possible!’” He is, however, self-aware enough to realise how parental monologues are received. “I was ‘passion this, passion that’. It went on and on and on.”
It was Dina who brought him up short. “Yeah, Dad, but what is your passion now?”
Van Persie, Premier League winner at Manchester United, star of Arsène Wenger’s young Arsenal team, twice the Premier League Golden Boot winner, had just quit playing in 2019, finishing his career at his boyhood club, Feyenoord.
