Miloš Degenek was 16, the temperature was minus eight degrees, and a jacket was not part of his sartorial repertoire. “I had, like, two pairs of trackies underneath one another, and then four jumpers,” he says, “because I didn’t have money to buy a winter jacket.”
Every day the budding Australian defender layered his clothes in this manner, then shivered his way through the 90-minute journey to VfB Stuttgart’s youth team training. Then, once it was done, he’d turn around and travel 90 minutes back.
