The boots Brown polished were special, the ones that provided the only memorable moment of the 1996 FA Cup final – if you discount the white suits Liverpool decided to parade in. They took a half-cleared corner from David Beckham and drove it back past David James. They belonged to Eric Cantona.”What was he like? Well, there was his presence for one thing. Have you ever met him? He is really intense, such a legend, and I was still a fan like everyone else. I never used to speak to him unless I was spoken to,” Brown reflected as he made his last preparations for this afternoon’s FA Cup final.”I remember the first time I walked into the first-team dressing-room, I was shitting it.

Because I was doing Eric Cantona’s boots I used to see him every morning and have a chat with him now and again. It wouldn’t be a long one but it would keep you going.”Then, suddenly, you are in the first team You don’t say anything but slowly you find your way around. I was 18 when I made my debut, against Leeds, my first full season was the one when we did the Treble and I had my fair share of games. Up until the quarter-finals [of the European Cup] I found myself playing against Barcelona and Bayern Munich.

It really hasn’t sunk in even now.”Manchester United was a tough, uncompromising school: “Gary Pallister had moved on to Middlesbrough but big Jaap Stam came in and with [Peter] Schmeichel shouting at you, it certainly helped you grow up. Stam was just a big, strong defender; you watched what he did and picked things up Laurent Blanc was especially good for that. People used to hammer him for his lack of pace but, technically, he was unbelievable. His positioning and heading of the ball were all beautiful.”Brown has three championship and a European Cup winners’ medal and, if everything goes according to form against Millwall, he will have a fifth, delivered like all the rest into the safe care of his grandmother, Hilda Kemp. His brother, Reece, 12 years old and a central defender at United’s academy, will be in Cardiff. He might not have to clean his brother’s boots, but the expectations on him, following someone Sir Alex Ferguson called: “the most naturally-gifted defender in the country”, must be enormous.”He tells me that he gets the obvious stick,” said Wes. “He’s told: ‘Your brother’s rubbish’ and sometimes he might think there’s pressure on his shoulders, but he’s a confident lad.

He’s doing all right, I mean, I wasn’t in a team at 12.”There have, however, been three hateful injuries to go with the four medals. Two wrecked cruciate knee ligaments and, in between, a fractured ankle. They cost respectively, the entire 1999-2000 season, plus the European Championship that followed; the first three months of the 2002-03 season; and now the first half of this campaign and, realistically, another European Championship.”I didn’t expect to go to Portugal,” he admitted. “I am not playing consistently and, at the beginning, I wasn’t playing well … Also, I’ve only being playing for three months and that’s nowhere near the fitness required for such a big tournament.”Recovering from the first cruciate injury took a year.