Arsenal's midfield dynamo has a special bond with the Spanish side he aims to beat tonight, reports SID LOWE

THE FIRST time they came for him, he hid out of sight; the second time, there was no escape. It was September 1997 and Rodolf Borrell had come to see a bunch of kids play in Mataro, up the coast from the Catalan capital. For the coach of FC Barcelona Alevin, the club’s Under-11s, the trip was familiar – in fact, he had made the same journey two months before – but the lad who caught his eye was not.

There was, he noted, a new number four dominating midfield. “He had everything: vision, athleticism, stamina, speed,” Borrell said.

“He could pass, he could shoot, and above all his decision-making was spectacular.”

Borrell’s judgment was spot on, but for one thing – the kid was not so new. The half-time whistle had not even blown when the man who now works with Rafael Benitez at Liverpool approached the Mataro coach, Senor Blai.

Where, he asked, had this new lad suddenly come from? Blai looked a little embarrassed, shifted awkwardly and, guiltily, finally came clean.

His name, Blai revealed, was Francesc Fabregas Soler, he was “a beast”, and he was here in the summer too.

“But,” he admitted, “we were under orders to hide him: when you turned up we made him stay in the dressing room.”

It was a cunning ruse. By the time Borrell returned in September, Cesc Fabregas had played five times for Mataro. Under Catalan Football Federation rules, he could no longer leave for another team – even if that team was Barcelona.

Borrell was not so easily beaten, though, and he eventually offered a compromise: Fabregas would continue playing for Mataro for the rest of the season but would travel to train with Barcelona every Monday, playing the occasional friendly.

And so, on November 10th, 1997 the 10-year-old set off for Barcelona, 55km away. It became a familiar route.

The next season, Fabregas joined formally and began training every day.

When players face their former clubs, the cliche has them “returning home”. This time, it’s true.

Tonight, Fabregas will come up against his boyhood idols, two on the pitch, one on the bench; his first real coach; his best friend and the tiny “mute” kid who turned out to be the world’s best player.

It was from those days that Fabregas likes to remember endless victories in PlayStation Pro Evolution challenges and where Gerard Pique, his best friend, likes to remind him that, a certain Leo Messi always slaughtered him; where, according to Pique, Fabregas always shirked table tennis matches – because he knew he would lose.

On the football pitch, he rarely lost. Coached by Borrell and Tito Vilanova, Pep Guardiola’s number two, Barcelona were unbeatable.

“He played with the Messi generation,” Arsene Wenger said last week.

“Pique, Messi, Fabregas . . . are you really surprised they won games 8-0, 9-0, 10-0?”

“It’s hard to find so much talent in one group,” Pique says while Fabregas adds: “I remember that Messi arrived later, at 13 or 14. He was very, very small but very special. He was practically mute and then one day he just suddenly started talking. He’s still hardly a big mouth, though.”

But if Pique was the emotional leader, Fabregas was the fulcrum. “We played 3-4-3, like the Dream Team,” Pique recalls.

Behind the forwards was Messi. In the middle was Fabregas, playing as a pivote, the axis upon which the team hinged. He was fiercely competitive: he admits that when he was a kid he would “cry and cry and cry” if things did not go his way. Above all, though, he was technical, tidy and totally in control.

He was, cules are proud of insisting, part of a Barcelona heritage - a line of continuity that runs through Guardiola, Fabregas’s idol, to his next heroes – Xavi and Andres Iniesta, the men who describe themselves as “sons of the system”, role models for CescFabregas. Iniesta recalls the Barca mantra: “Receive, pass, offer, receive, pass, offer.” Fabregas says:“If you’ve played at Barcelona, you develop a taste for good football.”

Xavi and Iniesta, however, were also an obstacle. Progression looked impossible. And in the power vacuum before the 2003 presidential elections, having seen Fabregas star at the Under-17 World Cup, Wenger took advantage.

“By the time, I realised,” says the then incoming vice president Sandro Rosell, “it was too late.”

“I don’t regret going at all,” Fabregas has said. “No one wants to leave Barcelona now because everyone gets a chance but when I was there you had to wait so long. And when a professional team offers you a deal at 16 . . .”

Tonight, Fabregas will be reunited with his oldest friends – whether he is fit enough to play or not.

Next week, he will return home. He has tried to skirt it, but the question lingers, hanging over Arsenal: having finished his schooling in England, will he, like Pique from Manchester United, return for good?

Among Fabregas’s greatest treasures is a signed Guardiola shirt, given to him at La Masia.

Guardiola dedicated it to “Barcelona’s future number four”. For years, that was Francesc Fabregas Soler’s greatest dream; for years, it has been Arsenal’s greatest nightmare.