"I couldn't believe it, to be honest," says Luke Shaw with a big smile.
"I didn't actually think it was him at first." The him in question is Roberto Carlos, the great Brazilian left-back, whose praise for Shaw's outstanding performance against Ukraine on Saturday – via a string of clapping-hands emojis on Instagram – was the icing on the cake of a special night in Rome for the England full-back.
Resuming the tale, Shaw says: "I clicked on it and saw he'd followed me and I sent it to my girlfriend and my friends and they were like 'You haven't even followed him back!'. It was just mad to see a massive legend like him … even following me was good, but to comment on my photo was even better."