Oliver Holt's Top 10 most interesting people of 2011 part 1, starring Wilshere, Beckham and Dyer

Published 10:58 22/12/11

Oliver Holt: Top Ten Most Interesting People of 2011 (pt 1)

We asked our Chief Sports Writer Oliver Holt to name the 10 most fascinating people he'd met in 2011. The resulting piece was so good that we've decided to split it into two separate instalments. Come back tomorrow for numbers 5-1.

***

10) Kieron Dyer
There are plenty of different types of courage in football. The courage to play in front of a hostile crowd, the courage to take a penalty, the courage to make a 50-50 tackle.

And then there is the courage to keep fighting back from injury. Time and time again.

The courage to refuse to give up on your career even when the bad luck keeps afflicting you and the run of setbacks seems beyond unfair. That refusal to give up is one of the reasons I admire Kieron Dyer so much.

Dyer is one of the most misunderstood players in the game, partly as result of past mistakes. There seems to be an impression he is some kind of feckless individual who doesn't really care about the game but the truth is I've rarely met a player who cares more about it.

I had a bit of breakfast with him at the QPR training ground at Harlington, near Heathrow, a few weeks ago. None of the other first team players were in. It was their day off.

But Dyer was in the final stages of his rehabilitation from the foot injury he sustained on the opening day of the season. He was dreaming about making his comeback in last weekend's home game against Manchester United, talking keenly about QPR's prospects this season and Amir Khan's fight against Lamont Peterson (Dyer, by the way, has an encyclopaedic knowledge of boxing as well as football).

Then last week, I heard he had suffered a recurrence of his foot injury in a training match.

Now he has to have another operation.

Now he will have to endure more taunts about how injury-prone he is.

And now he will have to show more of the same courage that has brought him this far and which will carry him onwards towards his return.

***

9) Jack Wilshere
Jack was standing with his parents and some friends on the edge of the mourners at Jack Marshall's funeral.

I knew he'd be there.

He had been a proper friend to Jack and his family as they made the last months of his life as memorable and comfortable as they possibly could be.

Other footballers played their part in arranging days out for the little lad and his family but what Wilshere did was beyond impressive. He went out of his way to spend time with Jack, he invited him and his parents to Arsenal games and to his house for a barbeque.

He even travelled up to Scunthorpe to offer support to Jack's elder brother, Josh, who was being bullied by kids at school. He went down to the local park with Josh so the bullies would see them together.

It takes a lot to do something like that. Especially when you are 19.

The easiest thing is to turn away from suffering and make excuses for not confronting it. But Wilshere did the opposite of that. The way he behaved says a lot about him and a lot about his family.

Why Jack Wilshere took brave Jack Marshall to his heart, by Oliver Holt

***

8) David Beckham
It was a beautiful November morning in Carson City, on the southern edge of the vast sprawl of Los Angeles. David Beckham had driven down from his home in Beverly Hills to take part in his penultimate training session before LA Galaxy's crucial play-off game against the New York Red Bulls.

I spoke to Beckham in a suite overlooking the pitch at the Galaxy's Home Depot Arena and he looked as happy and relaxed as I have ever seen him.

A couple of weeks later, he was to become only the second Englishman after Trevor Steven to win championships in three different countries but it was already clear that he was tempted by the idea of a new challenge after that.

eckham has many detractors but even they would find it hard to question his love of playing the game and the ambition that does not appear to have dimmed even in his late 30s.

Courted by Paris St-Germain, it is commonly thought that the main obstacle to a move to France is the wonderful lifestyle that he and his family enjoy in southern California.

But when I suggested that his wife might welcome a move to one of the great fashion centres of the world, Beckham did not disagree.

"Whose missus wouldn't?", he said. "It's Paris."

Why Beckham must be captain of the GB Olympic team, by Oliver Holt

***

7) Cyrus Mehri
Cyrus Mehri was sitting in the lobby at a hotel in South Kensington with the former Arsenal player Paul Davis. They were about to address officials from the Premier League and the Football League and talk to them about the Rooney Rule.

Mehri, an eminent lawyer, was one of the architects of the rule. Named after Dan Rooney, the owner of the Pittsburgh Steelers, the rule, which was introduced in 2003, obliged NFL teams to interview at least one black candidate when a head coaching position became vacant.

The Rooney Rule transformed the league. There are four times more black head coaches now than there were in 2003. And guess what, many of them have been outstandingly successful. In fact, in 2007 both the teams that reached the Super Bowl, the Indianapolis Colts and the Chicago Bears, were run by black coaches.

"There were some problems at first," Mehri said. "The Dallas Cowboys owner Jerry Jones thought it was okay to interview the black candidate over the phone and all the white candidates face to face.

"If there is passive racism present somewhere, we have found it erodes during the interview process. Sometimes, people are surprised with the calibre of a man when they meet him face to face."

Despite its success in the States, there has been fierce and often bigoted opposition to the idea of implementing the rule in English football.

It would change the appointment process, for a start. Clubs would actually have to hold proper interviews not conduct clandestine manouevres to try to lure a manager away from another club.

People are scared, too. They cry positive discrimination when it is nothing of the kind. No one is obliged to hire a black coach, just give them a chance to put their view.

Because, as we all know, we have 92 league clubs in this country and only two of them, Chris Powell and Chris Hughton are black.

It is to be hoped Mehri and others keep pressing the case because change is long overdue.

Why double standards over Ince mean we must pass the Rooney Rule, by Oliver Holt

Why vile reaction to Rooney Rule proposal shows there IS prejudice in our national game, by Oliver Holt

Oliver Holt: Why no one can pretend anymore that racism isn't rife in English football, by Oliver Holt

***

6) Chris Kirkland
Chris Kirkland is one of the nicest men in football and one of the unluckiest, too. If his career had not been plagued by injury, I'm convinced he would have been England's goalkeeper at the 2006 World Cup until now when the emergence of Joe Hart would have been a threat to him.

I met him up at the Wigan training ground late in the year after he had returned from loan at Doncaster after a back spasm. We sat in a small, bare room and talked about his hopes that a course of glucose injections would sort out his back problem once and for all and about the despair that overtakes him with each setback.

He deserves a spell free from injury and if he gets it, I still think he could force his way back into the Wigan team and challenge for a place in the England squad.

The unbreakable spirit and all-too-breakable body of Chris Kirkland, by Oliver Holt

***

Come back tomorrow for part two, in which Oliver reflects on the truth about his spat with Rio Ferdinand and salutes the year's bravest football fan.

Don't forget you can read Oliver Holt's column every Wednesday on MirrorFootball.co.uk and follow @ollieholtmirror on Twitter.

Fancy winning £3,000 for FREE this month? Play Mirror Football Streak for your chance to win cash prizes! Start predicting now!