Lionel Messi on a Tuesday night, followed by Kylian Mbappe on Sunday afternoon.
It’s safe to say that Matty Cash’s life has changed a bit since he was on loan at Dagenham and Redbridge in League Two in 2016.
But his former Daggers’ manager, John Still, reckons you could put Pele in front of his former charge and it wouldn’t make a blind bit of difference.
Cash will be part of the Poland side attempting to stop the 2018 World Cup winners from making it two from two in global football’s biggest tournament.
It’s the kind of tale that the Aston Villa wing-back could never have dreamed possible when Wycombe scrapped their youth system and left him facing the most uncertain of futures.
As it is, Still in convinced that Cash's football upbringing makes him the ideal man to tackle world football's biggest challenge.
“If you were going to a World Cup and you were going to play against Messi and then Mbappe, I mean, come on, you can’t get better than that,” says Still. “He must be so thrilled that’s happening. Some players would have ‘the fear’, they wouldn’t fancy it. But he hasn’t got that in him. He’ll relish that challenge, he really will.”
The 25-year-old was outstanding in Poland’s defeat to Argentina on Tuesday.
And although many will view the Poles as being lambs to the slaughter against the current world champions, Still has no doubt that Cash won’t be perturbed by the prospect of stopping Mbappe.
Image:
AFP via Getty Images)Despite it being a world away from the League Two environment that Cash stepped into six years ago.
“When we get someone on loan from a top club, I always take them aside and explain that League Two football is probably going to be more physical than anything they’ve experienced in the past,” says Still.
“You can have all the skill in the world but if you can’t hack the physical stuff then that won’t matter one bit.
“Some players come down and can’t handle it. Matty just embraced it. Playing against a League Two footballer or the best player in the world - it won't make any difference to him.
The wise money will be on France.
But Cash is no respecter of odds.
