Further underlining how long it has been since he began a new life in Britain, Bonetti’s first glimpses of Speroni were from a VHS tape of some of his performances in Argentina. The manager never saw him play live. “He and the goalkeeper coach Claudio Bozzini decided that they liked what they saw, and offered me a contract,” Speroni explains. “They were pretty special circumstances.”
“I had a big decision to make as well,” he continues. “For me, it was a big experience leaving home. I had to make a decision, should I play more games there before moving on or take a gamble and come to Europe, and I decided to take a gamble.”
Helping him decide to make this leap was an incident shortly before he left when a gang of armed supporters burst into the dressing room and accused the players of not trying. Although he played only twice, he was at Platense long enough to fall in love with Marina, who worked for the club as a sportswriter.
The young couple suddenly found themselves living in a flat on Victoria Road, which curls up towards both football grounds in Dundee. It had been vacated by Dundee striker Juan Sara, who became his best friend at the club as well as a church going companion at the Central Baptist church in the city, where they found pews full of friendly faces.
Speroni was also helped by the cosmopolitan make-up of Dundee at the time; there were, he recalls, as many as six Argentinians, and Spanish and Italian were the main languages in the dressing room. It was a heady, if unsustainable, time at the club. Although Speroni just missed legendary compatriot Cannigia’s 25 match-stay at Dundee, he was there when Temuri Ketsbaia signed, and, later, when Fabrizio Ravanelli made a short-lived appearance as the death rattle signalling the imminence of Dundee’s first administration grew louder. “I would like to have some of those players now and play with them again,” he says. “Georgi Nemsadze, what a player. What a team that could have been. They were as good as the players I have played with at Palace.”
He remains in touch with Sara, who is now coaching at River Plate. Bozzini, his former goalkeeper coach, still sends him texts, although Bonetti, who is now working in television in Italy, is harder to pin down. Speroni became closer to Jim Duffy, Bonetti’s successor, in any case. It was Duffy who advised the young ‘keeper about the move to Palace. “He played a big part in me coming here. I didn’t know England, but I sat down with him and he talked to me about it, and part of my decision was based on what he told me about moving on career-wise,” he says.