“At breakfast with the Dutch national team, Wesley Sneijder called out to Piet Velthuizen, goalkeeper of a small Dutch club: ‘Hey, Piet, how much do you earn?’ Velthuizen proudly replied: ‘€400,000.” “Don’t you think it’s funny,” asked Sneijder, Inter Milan’s playmaker, “that I make 20 times as much as you?’ After the exchange was publicly leaked, Sneijder protested that he and Velthuizen had been joking. That may be true – footballers’ humour is no laughing matter – and yet the conversation was classic Sneijder. The little man, whose Inter host Chelsea in the Champions League on Wednesday, has an unusually large dollop of confidence per square inch.” (FT – Simon Kuper)