Edgar Davids was sent off and his team lost an important game Saturday, but the Barnet FC player-manager still endeared himself to the club’s fans.
Davids rescued 36 Barnet fans who were stranded on the highway by kicking players off the team bus and taking the fans on the ride of their lives, the Telegraph reports.
We’ll admit, the former Ajax, Juventus and Netherlands star wasn’t driving the bus. He didn’t exactly kick his team off the bus either.
The Barnet bus was making the 215-mile trip from Accrington back home, when it came upon the fans’ broken-down bus. Some of them were waiting in the cold for a replacement bus. Davids spotted them and acted.
He told the bus driver to stop at the nearest rest stop. There, he ordered the players off the bus and told them to wait (it’s not like they could go anywhere else). Davids and the bus returned to the stranded fans and gave them a lift to the rest stop. The former Ajax, Juventus and Netherlands star was even kind enough to buy them coffee while they waited for the replacement bus to arrive — at their new, comfortable location.
“I saw the coach on the side of the highway with some of the supporters standing outside in the cold,” Davids said. “It was the least I could do for my team, to send the coach back to pick them up so they don’t stand in the cold.”
“Shortly after the coach had arrived it started to rain, I was glad I did it. No man left behind!”
Davids may have earned a world of fortune and fame as a professional soccer player, but he didn’t forget what it’s like to be down and out. Barnet could benefit from its manager’s karma-building move. The club is mired near the bottom of League Two (England’s fourth division), and it will needs every bit of help as it fights against relegation.
Have a question for Marcus Kwesi O’Mard? Send it to him via Twitter at @NESNsoccer, NESN Soccer’s Facebook page or send it here. He will pick a few questions to answer every week for his mailbag.
Photo via Facebook/Edgar Davids
