FA Cup semi-final sees my fastest ever team-mate and the biggest moaner I’ve ever met out to make history

THE fastest footballer I’ve ever played with and the biggest moaner I’ve ever met will play at Wembley today, both aiming to reach the FA Cup final.

And I would love to see the Crystal Palace duo of Ismaila Sarr and Will Hughes — two old Watford team-mates of mine — on the winning side against Aston Villa.

Isma is a lovely man and one hell of a player — he could be a 100 metres sprinter or a 5,000m runner because his effortless pace over any distance is extraordinary.

And with Isma there is an end product, too... nine goals and five assists this season in Oliver Glasner’s thrilling Palace attack.

My greatest memory of him was when we returned to training after the Covid lockdown.

The Watford physios were fuming because, unlike most players, Isma hadn’t been doing any fitness work on his own and provided them with no data, as he’d been asked to.

So on our first day back, it was like a mini pre-season. We were running around a 1km track and were told we had 15 minutes to run as far as we could.

We were all fit blokes but most of us were blowing out of our backsides after a lap or two.

Isma and Abdoulaye Doucoure were lapping most of us effortlessly while chatting away to each other in French.

Sarr’s endurance levels, as well as his sprinting ability, are absolutely phenomenal.

He ran a lot as a young kid growing up in Senegal and that has set him up perfectly for a career as a top Premier League player.

If Hughes had anything like Sarr’s pace, he would be playing for Liverpool or some other elite club — because he has every other quality needed to be a top player.

But his most obvious trait is his ability to constantly whinge about anything and everything.

Will was only 22 when he joined us at Watford from Derby but he was already an old man trapped in a young man’s body. He was old school, everything about modern life was rubbish.

I don’t know if you remember the Brad Pitt film The Curious Case of Benjamin Button... a baby is born with the age and personality of an old man. Well, that was Will.

When goalkeeper Ben Foster started doing his The Cycling GK podcast and videoed us around the training ground, it became a running joke that he would aim the camera at Will, who would respond by saying, ‘Get that thing out of my face’.

I see he has 12 yellow cards this season — and that’s because he is a horrible b*****d to play against but brilliant to have at your own club.

All that moaning means Will is a great driver of standards.

So it’s not because of my Birmingham City allegiances that I hope Palace beat Villa today — it’s because of Will and Isma.

There is a lot to admire about Palace as a team and a club, such as the way they stood by Glasner after failing to win any of their first eight Premier League matches this season — a patience they are now being rewarded for.

Then there’s the way that, unlike most top-flight clubs, Palace are unafraid to dip into the Championship and sign players such as Adam Wharton from Blackburn and Romain Esse from Millwall.

There are bargains to be had in the second tier — and these are players who haven’t got to acclimatise to living and playing in England.

And watching Palace attack is thrilling.

As well as Isma Sarr, Jean-Philippe Mateta and Eberechi Eze are just brilliant to watch.

Mateta is on a hot streak — that equaliser against Arsenal on Wednesday night was proof of a player bursting with confidence and blessed with excellent technique.

Eze seemed to be a bit flat early in the season after missing out on a big move last summer, while his team-mate Michael Olise headed to German giants Bayern Munich.

But once Eze was back on his game, so were Palace. What a talent he is.

Palace are a club looking for success in the present but constantly building for the future too — always knowing that their best players could be picked off by the real big boys.

And I think that Palace vs Manchester City would give us the best possible final.

Palace have a very good record against City and were close to going 3-0 up at the Etihad before Pep Guardiola’s men came back to beat them 5-2 the other week.

Having said that — and putting my personal allegiances aside — it would be cruel on Villa to end the season without the FA Cup or Champions League qualification.

Especially when they came so close to beating Paris Saint-Germain in the quarter-finals.

Like Glasner, Unai Emery is an outstanding manager and the high-profile January loan signings of Marcus Rashford and Marco Asensio showed Villa were targeting success in the here and now.

If Rashford starts ahead of Ollie Watkins at Wembley — as he did in both legs against French giants PSG — then we could definitely see Watkins heading out of Villa Park this summer.

Watkins would have every right to moan if he missed out on another massive match.

But, believe me, the Villa forward would never moan as much as Will Hughes.